MIDLAND, Texas — On Thursday, the Midland Memorial Hospital Board of Directors met for their meeting, where they approved a Master Facility Plan Upgrade to bring upgrades to Midland Memorial.
But it wasn't just the Board of Directors who needed to approve the project, as two other representatives needed to give the thumbs up before the plans could get off the ground.
“We have three different boards within Midland Memorial Hospital," Abraham Bejil, the vice president of facility services at Midland Memorial, said. "We have the Board of Finance, they look at the finance perspective and whether or not we are at the right financial postures to be able to approve these. Once that is approved, they move over to the Board of Trustees and then when the Board of Trustees approves we move over to the Board of Directors."
With everything approved, Midland Memorial can now get started on making new professional office buildings. These would hold facilities like their police department and medical records facilities.
Before, hospital officials needed to walk through the hospital itself to access these departments. Currently, there would be a designated space for them.
While the benefits to the public and surrounding community are minimal, the construction will allow for more benefits to come towards them in the future.
“So within our current campus, we will be tearing down the old 1950’s building, again that’s about 238,000 square feet," Bejil said. "When we tear that down, we will now have less square footage on campus, but that will position us for future expansion, so anytime we have additional needs within our community, we will the ability to expand with new real estate rather than try to renovate our old 1950’s building.”
This project is going to be a bit pricey with an approximate price tag of $156.8 million. The hospital, however, has a plan to come up with the cash.
“We plan to fund that using a combination of a bond issuance, philanthropy and operating cash on hand," Midland Memorial Chief Financial Officer Marie Castro said. "The bond that we plan to issue is going to yield us $89.5 million into our project fund deposit."
That bond is officially a fixed rate revenue bond, not a general obligation bond.
That’s good news for the taxpayers, as that means the hospital doesn’t have to go to the city to ask for taxpayer money.
“So a revenue bond would be a bond that would be secured by our gross revenues of the hospital,” Castro said.
Midland Memorial is hopeful to start this project in February 2024. The completion of the project is tentatively set for February of 2026.