[StBernard] Parish med facility/Meraux Land?

[Westley Annis]

State agency recommends setting aside $1 million to acquire land for St.
Bernard hospital

The state agency with the authority to recommend rearranging tax dollars for
construction projects voted unanimously Friday, Sept. 28 to use $1 million
of a $17.5 million appropriation for a medical center and hospital in St.
Bernard Parish to acquire land for the complex. 

The Interim Emergency Board took the action after St. Bernard officials
asked that some of the state money approved by the Legislature earlier this
year be set aside for buying real estate for the new hospital and medical
office building. 

Jerry Jones, director of the state Office of Facilities Planning and
Control, the arm of the governor's office that oversees state-financed
construction projects, said the medical center will be built within three
miles of Jackson Barracks, the headquarters of the Louisiana National Guard,
but he did not have a specific location.

The board's action now must be ratified by a mail ballot of the Legislature.

Estimated cost of the project is $78 million.

The Legislature allowed St. Bernard Parish to qualify for rural hospital
financing because of the parish's decimated population and infrastructure
damage from Hurricane Katrina. 

Chalmette Medical Center, the parish's lone hospital, was flooded during the
hurricane and never reopened. The 196-bed facility was torn down earlier
this year. 

Now the main medical facility in St. Bernard is the parish parish health
center, which provides outpatient services from trailer offices in the
parking lot of the former Super Wal-Mart in Chalmette. 


St. Bernard Parish officials have said a new hospital is a necessity for
long-term recovery because it would attract specialist doctors to the parish
and allow older residents who have moved away to live again in St. Bernard.
  
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Will this be built on Meraux Foundation property?   I thought it was being
discussed earlier that the foundation would donate the property for the
hospital?

What is the 17.5 million appropriation for?  I thought a religious order was
going to build a hospital in the parish.  Does this mean a community
hospital will be built?

Do any politicians in the know have an idea as to what's going on?