Hospital zoning change approved
Staff writer
An ordinance allowing creation of a district intended to limit hospital competition was accepted Monday.
Despite opposition from the city’s planning commission, Marion City Council unanimously approved the ordinance. The zoning change is meant to prevent “carve-out services” from establishing and taking away profitable services from St. Luke Hospital.
“It’s protecting the hospital,” city administrator Brian Wells said. “A lot of communities are losing hospitals. With an older community, it’s very helpful. Even younger folk. Whoever. We just need to have that resource.”
The zoning change doesn’t mean that an outside office or service can’t be established,
“This doesn’t prevent anyone from doing anything,” councilman Tim Baxa said. “It just requires them to come through the city to do it and be zoned for that purpose.”
Potential hospital-like buildings would have to be on a two-acre lot with a minimum 100-foot width. The zone would consist of the entire city.
Planning commission chairman Darvin Markley previously told the Record that some areas where a potential clinic or hospital could be set up would not work under the ordinance.
“The defunct Family Dollar store in the industrial park would not qualify to be used as a medical facility,” Markley said. “It’s too small. It’s just a little over an acre-and-a-half. They required two.”
The Marion County Health Department building and S&S MedSpa most likely would not have been able to open without special permission had the ordinance already been in place because of this.
St. Luke receives roughly $800,000 a year in property taxes.