St. Francis Health Center will be sold

Property that dates to 1888 as the site of Colorado Springs' first hospital will be sold, Penrose-St. Francis Health Services officials said.

The former St. Francis Hospital, now St. Francis Health Center, a 258,515-square-foot building at 825 E. Pikes Peak Ave., will be listed at a yetundetermined fair market value, said Jameson Smith, chief operating officer for Penrose-St. Francis Health Services.

Centura Health, the hospital system's management company, has been debating what to do with the building for several years, after deciding it would build a hospital at Woodmen Road and Powers Boulevard. That hospital will open in August.

"We were looking at having four distinct campuses we'd have to maintain and operate, so we thought it was time to sell two of our buildings to free us up to focus on our main mission of health care," Smith said.

Penrose-St. Francis announced in January it would sell Penrose Community Hospital at 3205 N. Academy Blvd.

It's not unusual for health care systems to divest real estate holdings that no longer fit their needs, said Rick Haugh, spokesman for the Colorado Hospital Association.

Profits from the sale of Penrose Community and St. Francis will be used for capital needs and indirectly offset construction of the $207 million new hospital, Smith said.

Memorial Health System sold two medical office buildings last year for $69.4 million, citing the same reason as Penrose-St. Francis.

The fate of 10 major health care-related tenants at St. Francis is unknown. Pikes Peak Hospice & Palliative Care has been leasing space since 1994. It occupies 50,000 square feet.

Martha Barton, the organization's chief executive officer, said she has not received specific information about a sale.

"We're waiting to learn more about potential impacts on current tenants," she said. "We do not have plans for relocation at this time."

Another tenant, Select Specialty Hospital-Colorado Springs, also will wait and see, said Valerie Brickell, chief executive officer of the 30-bed specialty hospital for the chronically, critically ill.

System spokesman Johnny Rea said Penrose-St. Francis will relocate by April its 26-bed inpatient psychiatric unit from St. Francis to Penrose hospital.

Other hospital services at St. Francis are a wound care clinic, outpatient psychiatric services, an alcohol and drug treatment center, outpatient surgery and a sleep lab. Rea said he did not know future locations of those services.

St. Francis Hospital was founded to treat injured railroad workers and for 107 years focused on emergency and trauma care.