Orange Regional Executes Sale-Leasebacks

ORMC signed a five-year sale-leaseback with nonprofit the Community Foundation of Orange and Sullivan Counties. The $10-million purchase price was supported by a $4-million gift to the Community Foundation and a $6-million mortgage from nonprofit Gerry Foundation Inc. The Community Foundation and Gerry Foundation will be establishing two development corporations, which will then look to sell the two hospitals--Horton Memorial Hospital in Middletown and Arden Hill Hospital in Goshen, according to an ORMC spokesman.

The complex land deal was necessary due to New York State Department of Health requirements that called for ORMC to sell its existing hospital campuses before it would provide full state approval for the new hospital project. The spokesman says ORMC expects to break ground on its new seven-story 374-bed hospital sometime in the first quarter of 2008. The new hospital is being built on a 61-acre site on East Main Street just off Exit 122 of Route 17. The new hospital should be operational in 2011.

ORMC president and CEO Scott Batulis says of the campus sales deal, "we are very excited about the sale-leaseback of the campuses. It brings us even closer to fully realizing the goal of building a new hospital for our community while at the same time ensuring that we will operate both campuses until the new hospital is complete."

Gerry Foundation executive Darrel Supak says, "the sale-leaseback is a collaboration of not-for-profit organizations that truly benefits the entire region through the development of a new, state-of-the-art hospital." When completed the new more than 600,000-sf hospital will be the largest medical center from the Tappan Zee Bridge and Albany. The project is the first of its kind in New York State in more than 20 years, ORMC officials say.