New outpatient center will help Mount Nittany Health continue to grow, official says. What’s next?
Mount Nittany Health’s proposed outpatient medical center in Patton Township was given conditional approval by the township supervisors Tuesday night.
Tom Charles, executive vice president of system development and chief strategy officer for Mount Nittany Health, gave supervisors an overview of the project during the meeting.
Charles said the project will enable Mount Nittany Health to continue recruiting and retaining physicians to deliver medical care to the State College community and region. Mount Nittany is the largest multi specialty medical group in the region and employs more than 220 physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants in a wide variety of medical and surgical specialties.
“We have grown so successfully. The short story is we’re out of room. We do not have room to continue growing and adding these skilled practitioners to our system and to be able to serve the community and for us to be able to do that, we really need to create an expanded footprint and more space and that’s what the outpatient facility will enable us to do,” Charles said.
The building will mostly be a physician office building, Charles said, with some limited ancillary services available and some outpatient procedural capability. He expects it will help Mount Nittany grow in key areas, such as primary care, and medical and surgical specialties.
With the creation of this building, Mount Nittany Health will be leaving some of its other buildings and consolidating some of its operations into this new building. Charles did not specify which buildings the health system would leave.
The supervisors reviewed a couple of different plans as part of the overall project, including a subdivision plan to create different lots and stormwater management, as well as right of ways, and the land development plan.
The subdivision plan proposes creating a new road into the site; it would have 14-foot lanes with 8-foot medians.
“Masters Boulevard would be the main route into the site and it would start at the Toftrees Avenue and Waddle Road intersection, creating a new T-intersections that would have a dedicated right turn lane and a full traffic signal there with Toftrees Avenue, and will continue into the project site and then go into a traffic circle that will connect another length of road yet to be named that will come down along the medical office building,” Nicole Pollock, Patton’s senior planner, said.
The traffic circle will allow the traffic to keep moving, and as traffic grows as the project develops, the traffic circle is designed to handle the development, Tony Fruchtl, of PennTerra Engineering, said.
The lot that will house the medical office building will be 20 acres. The building is proposed to have four stories, with 126,000 gross square feet of area. It will have outpatient rehabilitation facilities, laboratory, administrative and physicians offices. There will be no emergency services provided at this center.
Additional infrastructure on the site includes access drives, parking lots and a 10-foot shared use path, and landscaping and site lighting are included in the plan.
Doug Erickson, Patton Township manager, said this is the first development in Toftrees West, though it’s been zoned for and planned for growth for many years. The area includes over 600 acres and is a planned community. With the conditional approval, supervisors also approved a slight amendment to the Toftrees master plan, as it adjusts a portion of the town center.
Charles said they selected this location because it will allow them to continue to expand and they envision it as a progressive development over time.
“It is at the front end of what will be a very robust development, a great addition to the State College community in many ways. This is the gateway facility into that development,” Charles said.
Supervisor Elliot Abrams said this will be an important development for the community and makes it even more important that people remain aware of what is happening with the State College Area Connector project.
Last fall, Mount Nittany said the new center is planned to open in late 2023. In September 2021, the health system announced it would invest about $50 million to upgrade its facilities, including the construction of a new bed tower on the hospital’s campus.
This story was originally published March 24, 2022 at 2:37 PM.
