Cafaro Envisions Medical Campus at Enterprise Park

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – An expansion of Mercy Health’s St. Joseph Warren Hospital could be part of the proposed Enterprise Park at Eastwood development.

North Eastwood LLC, 4477 Youngstown-Warren Road in Niles, applied to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to discharge fill into 15.44 acres of forested wetland and nearly an acre of non-forested wetland as well as 1,727.5 feet of unnamed tributaries to Mosquito Creek.

The infilling is related to “construction of a medical office building, a medical education center, an assisted living and memory care facility, a mid-rise apartment building, a doctor’s office building and an additional building designed to accommodate the expansion requirements of St. Joseph’s main hospital facility and appurtenant features,” according to the public notice from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Pittsburgh district office.

North Eastwood’s address is the same as that of the Cafaro Co., and Joe Bell, director of corporate communications for the shopping center developer, confirmed that the proposed site for the medical and residential campus is the company’s Enterprise Park.

Mercy Health-Youngstown, which operates St. Joseph Warren Hospital on Eastland Avenue in Warren, “has expressed a strong interest in creating a facility,” contingent on the project’s ability to secure the necessary approvals from the required government agencies, Bell said.

Jonathon Fauvie, public relations manager for Mercy, said if the project goes through, it would be in addition to, not a replacement of, the hospital.

The application was submitted for a Department of the Army permit under the Clean Water Act, according to the public notice. A permit won’t be granted until water quality certification is received or waived from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. Comments are being accepted through Sept. 19.

Enterprise Park, which Cafaro Co. announced a few years ago for property just north of its Eastwood Mall Complex in Niles, is “pretty much a clean slate,” and the concept of a health-care focus for at least part of the property came through discussions with potential tenants, according to Bell.

“Health-care needs are changing all over the region and all over the country,” Bell said. “You will find health-care providers are always looking for ways to improve services and facilities.”

“We have looked at the Enterprise Park concept as part of our planning of future service offerings in Trumbull County,” Fauvie said. “As access remains a priority, we continue to look at ways to best serve our community.”

That assessment includes looking at new points of care to provide primary care, acute care or whatever else the community might need, he said.

Mercy is one of several health-care providers Cafaro is in discussions with regarding the proposed medical campus, which would occupy about half of the 103-acre Enterprise Park site, Bell said. All of the entities have a local presence, he added.

There has been no discussion of what the final cost of the project would be, though that could change as plans unfold and Cafaro gets “a better handle on what the actual value of what this is,” he said. The process also doesn’t have a definite timetable.

“We do know the process takes many months in terms of government approvals,” Bell said. If all goes well, observers “might start to see something coming out of the ground sometime next year.”

Pictured: A rendering of Enterprise Park at Eastwood.

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.