By Michael D. Clark
The Cincinnati Enquirer

MIDDLETOWN - City leaders voted for an agreement Tuesday evening to help keep the Middletown Regional Hospital - the city's second-largest employer - within its borders and part of its tax base.

Middletown City Council voted 6-0, with Councilman Perry Thatcher abstaining because of a conflict of interest, to OK a plan that has the city investing up to $30 million over the next decade to aid the hospital's move to the city's eastern border in Warren County.

The vote, which follows approval last week of the plan by the hospital's governing board, ends a two-year effort by city officials to keep the hospital, which has been at its current location for 85 years, within the city's borders.

"This has been a hard issue, but we have a good agreement," Mayor David Schiavone said.

The hospital is projected to spend from $150 million to $250 million on the new hospital off Ohio 122 east of Interstate 75.

"It was a very real concern that the hospital would have picked up and moved elsewhere. If that would have happened, it would have been a severe blow to the city," Mr. Schiavone said.

Hospital officials also considering sites in the city of Monroe and outside Middletown city limits in western Warren County.

The hospital will sit on 225 acres of an unspecified site to be determined later.

Mr. Schiavone said the city's investment will "come back to us tenfold over the years," once the hospital is opened in 2008 and a projected 1,125 jobs are created in the hospital and health and technology campus.

Middletown Law Director Les Landen said the agreement is a flexible plan to accommodate the expected contingencies that will arise as the hospital picks a site, zoning and architectural plans are proposed, and the I-75 and Ohio 122 interchange is improved.

E-mail mclark@enquirer.com