When PeaceHealth announced its plan to develop expanded inpatient services in North Eugene last Friday, most people in the University area probably thought the effects would be minimal.
But that’s not the case if you operate a business near the current Sacred Heart Medical Center, located at Hilyard and 13th street.
Mike Wilt, restaurant manager at the Excelsior Inn, 754 E. 13th Ave., said the hospital provides a good deal of the restaurant’s business.
“Definitely a good portion of our lunchtime clientele is from the hospital,” Wilt said. “They’re usually here in a meeting capacity, or to have lunch with job candidates.”
PeaceHealth said Friday that it will move its inpatient medical services and offices to a new location in North Eugene off Coburg Road, near Costco.
The new plan builds on the Governing Board of PeaceHealth’s spring 2000 announcement to create a two-campus system. The plan will change the Hilyard location from a full-patient medical center into an outpatient center, as well as housing business and administrative offices, while the North Eugene location will be developed into inpatient and medical offices that will serve as the hospital’s main medical center.
Currently, about 2,500 employees work at the Sacred Heart Medical Center. That number would drop to about 1,800 after the renovation, which will eliminate older buildings at the four-block Hilyard campus, hospital officials said.
PeaceHealth offered many reasons for building a new facility instead of renovating the Hilyard location, including costs, construction concerns and space limitations.
Sacred Heart spokesman Brian Terret said it will probably be about three years before the University area will even notice a change taking place. Some of the pre-1971 buildings will be completely removed for structural reasons.
“It’s nearly impossible to retrofit these buildings to earthquake standards,” Terret said.
Construction on the North Eugene site will begin in 2002 and be completed sometime in 2006, according to PeaceHealth.

“Fortunately, the transformation won’t start for a couple of years,” Wilt said. “It will give us the time to adjust our tactics accordingly. We’ll definitely have to more aggressively market to corporate and business customers.”
Along with hospital employees, visiting friends and family sometimes spend their waiting time in the shops on 13th Street neighboring the hospital.
“People come here [from the hospital] when they’re waiting … to buy a book or a card,” tova stabin, co-manager of Mother Kali’s Books, 720 E. 13th Ave. “We get some business, but it’s not our main business.”
One man who regularly visited the store during his wife’s appointments at Sacred Heart was remembered fondly by stabin.
“He would come in every time his wife had a dialysis appointment and buy himself a mystery book,” she said.
Employees at the nearby fast-food restaurant Subway, 1304 E. Hilyard St., said as much as 60 percent of the company’s lunchtime clientele comes from employees at the hospital.
At Smith Family Book Store, Evon Smith said she regularly sees the hospital employees and patients’ friends and families, but she thought that might change.
“We definitely see as part of our customer base both workers and patients,” Smith said. “But a lot of people who don’t live or work right here tend to avoid the University area.”