Proton cancer treatment center won’t be built at Oklahoma Health Center
By Jim Stafford Business Writer
The question of just where a $95 million, high-tech proton cancer treatment center will be built in Oklahoma City was answered Tuesday in an announcement that caught some by surprise.
Officials with ProCure Treatment Centers Inc. and its local physician partners said the 55,000 square-foot treatment center will be built on a six-acre site along the Kilpatrick Turnpike at MacArthur Boulevard in far northwest Oklahoma City.
That’s far from a site on the Oklahoma Health Center campus at NE 8 and Lincoln Boulevard that appeared to be the location of choice in January.
Selection of the alternative site was greeted with surprise by Dr. Joseph Ferretti, provost and senior vice president at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.
“Our partners, the College of Medicine and the Hospital Trust, have been negotiating with (ProCure),” Ferretti said. “We sent paperwork to them just recently, but we haven’t heard anything from them in the last week and a half, 10 days. This comes as a surprise.”
In the announcement by Pro-Cure, it called the Kilpatrick location part of a “growing medical corridor” along the turnpike.
On Jan. 18, the Oklahoma City Urban Renewal Authority approved a design for the center, which would have placed it at the heart of the city’s health care industry and near a $90 million cancer research center that the University of Oklahoma is building.
While the Urban Renewal Authority’s move was considered a “good positive step toward that location,” it clearly didn’t bind ProCure to the location.
At the time, Hadley Ford, Pro-Cure’s chief executive, said, “We still have sites under consideration and we’re collecting all the information.”
Ford was not available for comment Tuesday, but issued a statement that the Kilpatrick location would facilitate a fast construction schedule. ProCure officials hope to have the treatment center open by the summer of 2009.
“Our decision to choose this particular site was based on our view that we could, with great certainty, meet our aggressive schedule to bring proton therapy to this market,” Ford said in the statement. “Speed is important to us because every month of delay means hundreds of patients will have to forgo treatment.”
In an interview late Tuesday, James Jarrett, ProCure’s vice president for marketing and business development, said the company gave the Health Center location “very serious consideration,” but chose the Kilpatrick site because it presented the best opportunity to quickly get construction under way.
Groundbreaking is expected in the spring, he said.
“We felt that this would really provide the best opportunity to have the most aggressive schedule, which allowed us to start treating patients in as timely a fashion as possible,” Jarrett said.
ProCure will be leasing the sixacre campus, but Jarrett would not identify the owner of the land.
For backers of the Health Center campus location, news of the site selection brought disappointment.
“I’m obviously very disappointed with their choice and would have preferred that they would have gone to the Eighth and Lincoln site that is part of the Health Center,” said Carl Edwards, chairman of the Presbyterian Health Foundation. “Because of the cancer institute that is going to be built on the Health Center campus, we felt like it was a natural complement to that and would actually helped make that comprehensive cancer center even more comprehensive and a better facility.”
Local partners in the center are nine physician members of Radiation Medicine Associates and Radiation Oncology Associates.
ProCure also attracted local investment from a group headed by energy executive Aubrey McClendon, chairman and chief executive of Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy Corp.
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Originally Posted by bombermwc
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