Southern Humboldt Healthcare District buys CR’s Garberville site for new hospital

GARBERVILLE – After a failed attempt to fund a new hospital at the ballot box, the Southern Humboldt Community Healthcare District is moving forward with a new plan.
In May, Southern Humboldt voters rejected Measure W which would have used increased parcel taxes as collateral for a long-term loan.
District representatives continued to look for ways to replace Jerrold Phelps Memorial Hospital which they say must be done by 2030 when stricter seismic standards will be enforced by the state.
This week College of the Redwoods agreed to sell the Garberville Instructional Site to the district for more than $1.1 million. It will be the site for the new hospital that was estimated to cost $35 million this year. CEO Matt Rees anticipates that will balloon to about $45 million due to inflation over the next five years. Rees said the district will explore federal, state, and local funding over that time to build the new facility.
“USDA has some programs. There’s also some local banks in the area that a have some programs as well as there’s the HUD program,” Rees said. He continued, “so there’s several different options that we can look at and we just need to get ourselves in a financial position so that we can move forward with this and hopefully we’ll get some good support from the community and we’ll do some fundraising as well.”

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