Healthcare to Childcare

Later this year, construction will be complete on the North Platte Valley Medical Center (NVPMC), the critical access hospital at the corner of 13th Street and Bridge Avenue. 

The facility—which will hold a 24/7 emergency room, an extended care wing and an acute care wing—will absorb both the Saratoga Care Center and the Platte Valley Clinic. The building which currently houses the Platte Valley Clinic at 1208 S. River Street will then be vacant, which had previously raised the question of what the Town of Saratoga would do with the facility.

With any luck, it will take on a new life as a daycare and preschool through a shared operation between Valley Village Child Care and Excel Preschool. Representatives from both organizations were in attendance at the February 15 meeting of the Saratoga Town Council to propose their joint use of the building. 

Historically, the Corbett Medical Building—which houses the Platte Valley Clinic—has been under the ownership of the Town of Saratoga. The governing body, in turn, has leased the building out to providers as part of an agreement between the Town and Corbett Medical Foundation.

“I went back today and looked at the original agreement between Corbett Medical Foundation and the Town related to that building. It was, essentially, gifted to the Town back in 1994 with the intent that the Town would establish a lease and use the building and the property for the purpose of having a medical clinic or a doctor’s office in the Town of Saratoga,” said Councilmember Jon Nelson. “There’s a clause in that agreement that discusses the Town’s ability to repurpose it if and when there comes a time for another higher and better use for it.”

Nelson asked Schelby Merrill, a member of the Valley Village Child Care board, and Jamie Stein, director of the Excel Preschool program in Carbon and Albany counties, if the two were in conversation with the Corbett Medical Foundation. Both said they were, stating the foundation appeared to be in support of the facility being used by the daycare and the preschool. Stein added the facility was beneficial for both organizations as they served many of the same families in the Valley.

“This facility actually gives us a lot in one location with being right across the street from the park. That saves us the expense of having to create an entire playground for the kids to access,” said Stein. “Plus, with us being able to be in one facility, for those families that currently have to transport those kids from the daycare facility to Excel Preschool and then back, being able to be in one location would be a really big benefit to the families we mutually serve.”

While nobody on the town council appeared to be against the idea of the Corbett Medical Building being used as a joint daycare/preschool facility, the sticking point appeared to be how to go about it. Both Nelson and Councilmember Ron Hutchins had some thoughts on how moving forward might look.

Hutchins, who stated his belief the Town of Saratoga should not be a landlord, proposed gifting the property to the NVPMC. The medical center, in turn, could rent it to the two childcare organizations as a form of added revenue.

“Then it’s a win-win thing where the clinic is actually supported with rent, it has a little more funding, we’re not the landlords and you guys still get what you want,” said Hutchins. “It would support the new clinic, it would support them and we are out of the landlord business as a Town.”

Citing the desire to reduce the amount of overhead for operating the facility, Merrill raised the idea of the Town of Saratoga donating the property to Valley Village Child Care and Excel instead of the NVPMC.

“Ideally, I think the two options on the table going down this road are some sort of a sale or gift of that nature and we dispose of that property in accordance with Wyoming Statute or it’s maintained as something that’s a town asset or there’s a new lease agreement in place,” said Nelson.

Under Wyoming State Statute 15-1-112(b)(i)(D), a municipality may sell a property to “any person acquiring the property for a use which the governing body determines will benefit the economic development of the municipality” without advertising the sale of the property or calling for bids. Under 15-1-112(b), the municipality may only do so after a public hearing, the notice of which would include the appraised value of the property and published for three consecutive weeks in a newspaper of general circulation within the county.

“I don’t think there’s any argument that having access to daycare and preschool serves an economic benefit to the community,” Nelson said.

Nelson added, should the Town of Saratoga take a similar approach with the childcare organizations as had been taken between the governing body and Corbett Medical Foundation, a similar clause could be added to that agreement.

“I assume it wouldn’t be objectionable to anybody if a clause similar to the one that’s in the Corbett-Town agreement, that maybe there’s some agreement similar to that that would make the donation but then would retain the ability for the community to have it be something that’s always going to be a community benefit use,” said Nelson. “So if it ever ceased to be a daycare/preschool, that there would be some consent that would have to be given by the parties—the stakeholders in it—that whatever it’s going to be now continues that tradition of it being something that’s there for the community.”

While no formal action was taken by the Saratoga Town Council, the governing body and the child care organizations appeared to have some ideas on how to move forward.

The next meeting of the Saratoga Town Council will be at 6 p.m. on March 1 at Saratoga Town Hall.