A national owner and operator of rehabilitation hospitals is cleared to build an 80-bed facility in Bangor.
The Bangor Planning Board on Tuesday approved a land development permit for Encompass Health to build an inpatient rehabilitation hospital at 1017 Union St. Encompass already runs more than 160 facilities in 37 states and Puerto Rico, according to the company.
The facility will be built on an empty 17.5-acre site next to the Airport Mall. The driveway to the hospital will connect to Union Street between the Concord Coach bus terminal and a Midas auto repair shop, the application states.
The hospital will care for patients recovering from a major injury or illness, a service that has been needed locally since Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center closed its Bangor acute inpatient rehabilitation program in 2022.
“This project is sorely needed,” Planning Board member Kenneth Huhn said. “Since Eastern Maine Medical Center closed its rehab unit, hospital beds have been nonexistent in this area.”
Dr. Peter Keebler, a Bangor resident and head of Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center’s rehab program, spoke against the proposed hospital because he’s concerned it’s larger than what the region needs.
When Northern Light’s acute inpatient rehab unit closed, Keebler said it had 36 beds, but usually served only 19 to 20 patients at a time.
“My concern is not with the service at all, but whether the scope of this is significantly greater than we should be doing,” Keebler said. “We certainly don’t want to bring in a big development and see it fail.”
Additionally, Keebler wondered whether there are enough medical professionals in Bangor to staff an 80-bed facility, especially considering Northern Light’s rehab unit closed due to a lack of staff, he said.
The project’s application proposes constructing the single-story, roughly 79,000-square-foot building in two phases, the first of which would launch later this year and finish in 2027.
The first phase will build the driveway to the hospital, the majority of the parking area, and a 58,000-square-foot portion of the hospital that would hold 50 beds as well as administrative, kitchen and social areas.
Phase two of the project will add an additional 21,000 square feet of the building, capable of holding another 30 beds, as well as extra parking spaces, the application reads. The second portion of construction will begin in 2028.
In the application, the company estimates the total cost of construction will be approximately $42.6 million. However, when Encompass Health Corp. outlined its intent to build the facility in a Nov. 6, 2023, letter to Maine’s Department of Health and Human Services, the company estimated the hospital would cost $61.4 million.