WINDSOR - If developer Martin Lind and hospital system CEO Rulon Stacey get their stars properly aligned, a one-of-a-kind "wellness" center and a resort-style hotel could make the Windsor's Water Valley community a mecca for health-conscious travelers.
One piece of the puzzle is certain to be in place: A $20 million medical center - part clinic and part fitness club - along with offices for doctors' practices will open by late 2009.
Lind, who has turned Water Valley into what a national magazine calls Colorado's No. 1 resort community, said the concept of putting health care together with a boutique hotel and conference center will make Marina Plaza a destination unique in the state. The concept has already taken root in Florida, California and the Texas Gulf Coast.
"This is becoming an industry unto itself," Lind said. "We'll market this, hit the shows, and make sure that our little star becomes a big blip on people's radar screens."
Stacey for three years has pursued the idea of a wellness center that takes the health-club model to a new level, with the original focus on Poudre Valley Health Systems' Harmony Campus in Fort Collins.
Opposition from health club operators in and around Fort Collins, plus the financial stress that the building of Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland put on the hospital system, caused PVHS to shelve that plan.
"We just couldn't get the financing in place for that," Stacey said. "We began talking to Martin, and have been in conversations with him for more than two years."
Pieces of the puzzle
The Marina Plaza plan now calls for the 16,000-square-foot, $20 million medical wellness center and office complex, a 60- to 90-room boutique hotel, a 10,000-square-foot conference center, retail and restaurant space and a small outdoor amphitheater - "nothing monstrous, nothing earth-shaking," as Lind described it.
The project's price tag will fall between $50 million and $60 million, Lind said. It will take shape in Water Valley South, on lakeside acreage that fronts the Pelican Falls Golf Course's No. 9 island green.
Negotiations with two hotel developers - one of them local, the other out-of-state - were under way as the Business Report was press-bound.
"I've got two very interested parties," Lind said. "I think by the first week of August I'll have it much more well-defined."
Steve Ellsworth, vice president of system development for PVHS, said physician groups were also showing interest in the Water Valley location.
"We'd like to see all types, from primary care to various types of specialties such as cardiology and orthopedics," Ellsworth said. "It fits right in with the wellness center concept."
The market for such services that is partially built into the Water Valley community. The opening this fall of the Good Samaritan Society Senior Living Resort in Water Valley South will mean hundreds of new residents, many of them drawn by the community's active lifestyle, will be potential Marina Plaza clients.
"That's the big value," Ellsworth said. "That was a big plus for us."
The format of the new wellness center will be tailored to the specific needs of retirees and other active adults who are flocking to Water Valley, now with a population of nearly 3,000 people.
'De-conditioned' population
"This will be a medical wellness and fitness center, which is different from the typical health club," Ellsworth said. "This serves an older, what we call de-conditioned, population, a clientele that you don't normally see at the Bally's-type environment. They can work out and do fitness routines, and still have access to physical therapists and other medical specialists."
Stacey said that the plans for the center, as laid out by Vaught Frye Ripley Design Inc., indicate its unique place in the Northern Colorado health-care market.
"It's a place where people can go to learn to be healthy, as opposed to a place where they go to get fixed when they're sick," he said. "It's not like anything else we have in this region, and it fits in well with the vision that Martin has for Water Valley."
PVHS will provide health services in space leased from Lind.
Architect Frank Vaught, who also designed the Good Samaritan center, also said the destination-resort aspect of the wellness center would make it a draw for people from well outside the region.
"If you lived, say, in Nebraska, and you came here for knee or hip surgery, or heart surgery, this would be the place to get better," he said. "The clinical integration is what separates this from the old fitness club idea. We're marrying up the medical office building, and going step further by bringing clinical services, like physical therapy and cardiac care, right into the center." |
