In 2003, we conducted a Healthy Village transformation feasibility study for St. Joseph Regional Medical Center, a unit of CHI, for two inner city properties as it was planning a new replacement hospital on a green field site less than 4 miles from their inner-city flagship hospital. The work resulted in the implementation of the St. Joseph Regional Healthy Community Initiative. The city of Reading suffers from “white flight” and more recently, gentrification. As New York gentrified and poorer people were forced out, many found their way to Reading. The city is an early and prime example of increasing concentrations of poverty as a consequence of gentrification pressures. The initiative resulted in the transfer of the legacy St. Joseph Hospital to the Reading School District which attracted a $100,000,000 plus state grant for the transformation of the property into a new junior high school.
The smaller hospital located near the central business district became the St. Joseph Medical Center Downtown Campus which no longer operates as a short-term acute care hospital and which contains similar uses as the Milford example above.
In 2015, Penn State Health purchased St. Joseph and it is now part of the Penn State Health system. With the merger, a renewed interest in education, skills development and workforce training has emerged with Penn State’s medical school and Penn States Berks, the satellite Penn State college in Reading, leading the way.
As is typical in all of our engagements, we apply Healthy Village® Design Principles to the transformation plan and also the neighborhoods nearby. In Reading, this initial planning work resulted in the planning of a site in close proximity for a new hotel.
Since it opened in December of 2015, the Doubletree hotel, which is owned by the local NFP affordable housing developer, consistently ranks as number one in market share in the region and has won two years in a row the highest customer service award among all Doubletree hotels worldwide. Its secret is that it identifies recruits, trains, hires and promotes from the lowest echelon of the socio-economic scale including ex-prostitutes and ex-felons most of whom walk to work. It molds the staff into a team and gives them hope for a future. The hotel is still thriving even in these times.
The smaller hospital located near the central business district became the St. Joseph Medical Center Downtown Campus which no longer operates as a short-term acute care hospital and which contains similar uses as the Milford example above.
In 2015, Penn State Health purchased St. Joseph and it is now part of the Penn State Health system. With the merger, a renewed interest in education, skills development and workforce training has emerged with Penn State’s medical school and Penn States Berks, the satellite Penn State college in Reading, leading the way.
As is typical in all of our engagements, we apply Healthy Village® Design Principles to the transformation plan and also the neighborhoods nearby. In Reading, this initial planning work resulted in the planning of a site in close proximity for a new hotel.
Since it opened in December of 2015, the Doubletree hotel, which is owned by the local NFP affordable housing developer, consistently ranks as number one in market share in the region and has won two years in a row the highest customer service award among all Doubletree hotels worldwide. Its secret is that it identifies recruits, trains, hires and promotes from the lowest echelon of the socio-economic scale including ex-prostitutes and ex-felons most of whom walk to work. It molds the staff into a team and gives them hope for a future. The hotel is still thriving even in these times.
Today we are moving forward with a central city Healthy Village master plan building upon the success of the earlier inpatient hospital transformations and the hotel. The education, skills development and workforce training initiatives in healthcare careers at what is now the Penn State Health St. Joseph Downtown Campus (CNAs, nurses, physicians and other job categories) and new hospitality and culinary career ladders are being leveraged across three anchor properties – the Downtown Campus, the hotel and a new hospitality and culinary/cooking school being developed in a former bank building across from the hotel. Affordable, workforce and senior housing sites and developers are being identified in nearby neighborhoods.