Hospital Campaign on Home Stretch

Largest Fund-Raiser in Island History Set to End in Three More
Months; $10 Million Still Must be Raised

By JAMES KINSELLA
Gazette Senior Writer

As summer moves into high gear on the Island, the Martha\'s
Vineyard Hospital will launch the final push to raise the rest of the
money for the construction of a new building.

Hospital chief executive officer Timothy Walsh said the building
campaign has raised about $33 million of the $42 million required to
rebuild the hospital at its Linton Lane campus in the Eastville section
of Oak Bluffs.

Mr. Walsh said the hospital hopes to raise the remaining money and
to obtain the necessary permits by Dec. 31, with construction to start
soon after. The fund-raising campaign is the largest in the history of
the Vineyard.

The hospital, a privately owned community institution, is pursuing
the campaign in the midst of improved financial operating results. The
hospital\'s 2006 annual report is included as a special supplement
in today\'s edition of the Vineyard Gazette.

For the fiscal year ended March 31, the hospital posted a net
operating gain of just over $1.5 million on revenue of $39.5 million,
more than double the gain posted last year before gifts and other
income. The affiliated Windemere Nursing Home, with a fiscal year ended
last Dec. 31, also posted its second profitable year in a row, albeit
doing so with a slender $4,000 surplus on revenue of $5.5 million.

The hospital launched its capital campaign at the start of last
summer with the announcement that $20 million had been pledged toward
the project. In the intervening months, the campaign has raised
additional money from more donors, including year-round residents who
have participated in what the hospital has dubbed the Islander Campaign.

Mr. Walsh said more fund-raising events are slated for private
Vineyard homes this summer to encourage more seasonal residents to
donate to the project.

\"Our goal and our expectation is that we\'ll raise the
bulk of the money by the end of the summer,\" Warren Spector,
co-chairman of the capital campaign, said yesterday afternoon.

\"I feel very good about our progress to date, but I also feel
the last $10 million will be the hardest to raise,\" Mr. Spector
said. \"We\'ve gone to a large number of people. There might
still be some large gifts out there, but we don\'t know about them.
I think it\'s going to be hard.\"

Mr. Spector said the final approval of the project as a development
of regional impact by the Martha\'s Vineyard Commission likely will
generate whatever remaining support the campaign needs.

\"But it\'s going to be a lot of work - a lot of
work,\" he said.

Cost estimates for the reconstruction project, Mr. Walsh said, have
been calculated based on raising the necessary funds by the end of this
year. Delaying the start of the construction beyond that time, he said,
would lead to inflation, eroding the value of the promised funds and
make more fund-raising necessary.

\"We can\'t let this drag on,\" he said. \"If it
does, it\'s going to cut into what we\'ve raised.\"

At the same time, he said, \"We\'re very
optimistic.\"

Hospital leaders have committed to having all of the needed funds
either in hand or pledged before construction starts. Mr. Walsh said the
hospital will not take on a mortgage to finance the project.

The plan calls for replacing the decrepit 19-bed hospital with a
state-of-the-art, 25-bed clinical facility. The current hospital
building dates to sections built in 1974 and 1929, and is in poor
condition. The hospital\'s relatively few beds can quickly result
in an overflow of demand.

Martha\'s Vineyard Hospital is proposing a new two-story wing,
partial replacement of the 1929 section and renovation of the 1972
section. The new wing will house all inpatient rooms, surgery, imaging,
outpatient services and the emergency department. The 1972 wing will
house physician and hospital administration offices.

In another development related to the project, two firms have
submitted proposals to the Martha\'s Vineyard Commission to conduct
a risk assessment of rebuilding the hospital at its Linton Lane campus.

The commission\'s coordinator of developments of regional
impact, Paul Foley, said Wednesday he anticipates that the commission
will select one of the firms in the coming days. Their findings will be
brought before Mr. Walsh and Mark London, the commission\'s
executive director, to use in reviewing the proposed reconstruction
project.

At several meetings last year and earlier this year, commissioners
questioned the wisdom of keeping the hospital at its present location in
light of potential damage from ocean storms, of traffic congestion along
nearby Beach Road, and of the possible future failure of the Lagoon Pond
drawbridge. A commission subcommittee subsequently prepared a report on
possible alternate hospital sites.

Hospital officials have vigorously resisted moving the project to
another site, saying that building at a new location would push the
project cost to $60 million to $70 million.

In a compromise, the hospital agreed to fund a risk assessment of
the Linton Lane site. The selected firm will examine both the potential
threats to the site and measures that could be taken to mitigate the
risks.

Mr. Foley said he anticipates that the risk assessment will proceed
alongside the commission\'s review of the hospital project as a
development of regional impact.

The project has yet to be formally referred to the commission as a
DRI, although the hospital has proceeded in the expectation of a
referral. Mr. Walsh said the hospital has received a letter from the Oak
Bluffs building inspector, Jerry Wiener, that he intends to refer the
project to the commission when the hospital files for its building
permit.

The hospital already has filed proposed plans with the commission to
give the staff an early start on reviewing the project.

Of the permits being sought by the hospital, Mr. Walsh describes the
DRI approval as \"the big one.\" The hospital also is or will
be seeking a town building permit, a permit from the Oak Bluffs
conservation commission, and a sign-off from the state on its
construction plans.