Lawrence Armstrong, a San Clemente resident and chief executive of Irvine-based architecture and planning firm Ware Malcomb, said today that his firm will donate $250,000 worth of design and planning services to keep the current Saddleback Memorial Medical Center San Clemente campus open.
Fountain Valley-based MemorialCare Health System, which acquired the medical center in 2005, said in August that it would do a feasibility study with an eye toward converting it to an ambulatory care campus.
Save Saddleback San Clemente Hospital, an advocacy group, has fought to keep the hospital, including its emergency room, as is. Armstrong recently reached out to the group to offer Ware Malcomb’s services free of charge.
The Ware Malcomb proposal for Saddleback San Clemente calls for a full-service emergency room, a new parking structure, a 75,000-square-foot medical office building, and a 60,000-square-foot hospital.
MemorialCare said in a statement that it has a “developer who has been working extensively on a feasibility study to transform the campus to better meet the health care needs of the community since early last fall.”
The developer is Denver-based NexCore Group.
The hospital operator added that it, among other things, has met with doctors throughout the region and the “vast majority of [them] believe this ambulatory health care campus of the future will help enhance health care quality and vastly expand access and services. ” It said it’s looking at “services ranging from a 24-hour advanced urgent care center, ambulatory surgery center and imaging center with the latest technology to rehabilitation, health and wellness programs and space for a large number of physician offices. ”
