By Tim Bonfield
The Cincinnati Enquirer
NORWOOD - If a proposed heart hospital actually gets built in Norwood, it would add to what officials already call a "medical mecca" that has been developing there in recent years.
The Ohio Heart Health Center and Deaconess Associations Inc. announced plans this week to build a 60-bed heart hospital that would create about 250 jobs. One of two sites under consideration for the $50 million to $60 million facility would be part of a 22-acre parcel just northeast of the Montgomery Road crossing over the Norwood Lateral.
If the project goes according to plan, it would be open by early 2005. But many steps must occur first, including a series of public meetings and hearings in Norwood.
"It's not a done deal, but there's a great deal of interest in pursuing this," said Rick Dettmer, development director for the city of Norwood.
Just a few blocks away, on the southwest side of Montgomery Road and the Lateral, more than 20 health-related businesses have concentrated their services in several neighboring office and retail centers. Among them: three kidney dialysis centers, a urology center, physical therapy services, and offices for home health, hospice and medical staffing agencies.
Medpace Inc., a medical research company that occupies a glassy building overlooking the Lateral, soon will be moving less than a block into a 90,000-square-foot building under construction at the former site of a Contractor's Warehouse store.
"Norwood is gradually becoming a medical mecca," said Will DeLuca, a City Council member and chairman of the council's economic development committee. "The heart hospital would complement all that."
Although Norwood isn't the only site under consideration - the other site was not identified - its proximity to I-75 and I-71 makes it a good location to draw patients from throughout the region, said Mark McDonald, chief operating officer for the Ohio Heart Health Center.
Norwood officials are waiting for developers to submit an updated plan.
E-mail tbonfield@enquirer.com
TOP STORIES
Red Planet almost in spitting distance
Pit bulls in doghouse again
North Bend's existence in hands of voters
Norwood as 'medical mecca'
IN THE TRISTATE
Tony Orlando pinch-hits at Taste
In a new century, the dream is the same
Cemetery wants its deer departed
Search for the big gun pays off
Picture of the day: Moving in, a first-day ritual
In your schools
Regional Report
ENQUIRER COLUMNISTS
Bronson: P.C. history repeats: First Miami, then Anderson
Howard: Some Good News
Faith Matters: Mothers bond together
BUTLER, WARREN, CLERMONT
Chance to dunk officials nets $1,000 for United Way
Abandoned box put cops on terror alert
Countryside YMCA to celebrate 25th anniversary
Party starts school year
6-month hunt for killer ends
OBITUARIES
Dick Pike jazzed up radio's small, but legendary, WNOP
William Tepe was doctor 50 years
Charles Woeste lineman for 34 years
OHIO
New academy trains flight nurses
Expanded methadone treatment considered
Woman stabbed after saying no to beggar
Heavy-duty stretchers carrying increasingly heavy-duty patients
Ohio Moments
KENTUCKY
School celebrates 30 years of growth
House washed away; boy dies, two missing
Slots-at-tracks proposal likely to have easier time
Crossing guard hit by car outside school
Man gets 14 years for death of toddler
Murderer who killed woman, son loses appeal
Company of soldiers is home from Afghanistan
Ky. fair good this year; centennial will be great
Kentucky obituaries
