DANVERS — The owners of the old Hunt Hospital plan to build upscale senior housing on the property, a marked change from their original intentions of building a "state-of-the-art" health care center.
Developers envision a "country club" setting rather than an institutional one on the 16.5-acre property. They plan to do away with the tired, 1950s former Hunt Hospital and its hodgepodge of buildings.
"There will not be anything we will retain of the existing buildings," said Chairman and CEO Joseph Traina, head of the New York-based Traina Companies. "They are antiquated. ... The cost to bring them to today's standard would be the cost to build them new."
Present zoning would let Central Healthcare Initiatives build a hospital four times the size, but that will not happen.
"It's the wrong area," Traina said. "It's surrounded by residential, quiet streets. The volume and the traffic would be an insurmountable issue for the infrastructure here."
Traina and his son Joseph Traina Jr., the Traina Companies' senior vice president and chief operating officer, were in town last week to talk about the Hunt Center's redevelopment. They have been working behind the scenes on a concept, but they did not have many details other than the overall concept.
"It will look more like a country club setting than any commercial, institutional setting," said Traina Sr., who described a "greenhouse concept" that would involve "an upscale way of seniors having various levels of care in one complex."
The Traina Companies is a New York-based, privately held real estate development firm. With its subsidiary, Central Healthcare Initiatives, it develops hospitals and medical centers in New York and New Jersey, among other places. It expanded into Massachusetts with its purchase of the Hunt Center a year and a half ago.
"We are looking to give (senior residents) a cost-effective but very upscale alternative," Traina Sr. said.
To illustrate the work going on behind the scenes, the Trainas set up architectural drawings by the firm Perkins Eastman along the windows in a second-floor meeting room at the Hunt Center. The drawings were just concepts, but so far, the Trainas are ruling out medical offices and ambulatory care.
Since they are not operators of senior living facilities, they have been speaking with national operators. Once they have an operator, they will be able to refine their concept.
"There has been no shortage of operators who have expressed a real interest to be here in Danvers," Traina Sr. said. Danvers is a desirable community, upscale, affluent and "at the epicenter of health care in Massachusetts."
Town officials said earlier this year that they had not heard much from Traina officials after the company paid $4.5 million to buy the Hunt Center from Beverly Hospital at the start of 2009 with plans for a "state-of-the-art health care campus."
Traina Sr. said he plans to invest about $95 million to build the senior living facility, including acquisition, design, construction and fit-out.
The Trainas said they are taking their time to make sure things are done right. They have had preliminary meetings with town planners and plan to come back when things are more refined.
"We are taking a slower approach to make sure it really is a long-term success for the town of Danvers," Traina Jr. said.
"We are not coming in with plans to overbuild or to build on spec and have the chance of having vacant buildings," Traina Sr. said. "We are building on demand, and right now we are determining what that absorption rate is."
The Trainas bought the old Hunt Center during a medical building boom, including the Beverly Hospital at Danvers and the Mass General/North Shore outpatient facilities in Danvers and Lahey Clinic's expansion in Peabody. Salem and Beverly also have large hospitals able to provide the medical care seniors need.
"People in this area have enough options with the hospitals and other medical centers. I think the last thing they need is another hospital," Traina Sr. said.
Staff writer Ethan Forman can be reached at 978-338-2673 or by e-mail at eforman@salemnews.com.
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