After a year of uncertainty, it appears Long Beach will have a clearer picture of the future of Community Hospital after the city council meets next week.
Tuesday’s upcoming closed session council meeting is the final opportunity the council will have to approve or deny a proposal from Community Hospital’s new operator, Molina, Wu, Network, according to Fourth District Councilman Daryl Supernaw.
(John Molina is a partner in MWN and also a founding partner in Pacific6, the parent company of the Long Beach Post.)
The 94-year-old East Long Beach hospital which sits on a fault line closed last summer after the facility failed to meet state seismic standards. Its’ previous operator, MemorialCare, determined it was too costly to retrofit the campus.
MWN took over as the new operator with plans to reopen the facility in January of this year but had to push the opening into the Spring when they hit a snag in financing the $45 million needed for seismic retrofitting. The city owns the land the hospital sits on and has been working with MWN on a leasing agreement.
On Friday, Supernaw announced in his weekly newsletter that the council would be making a decision, one way or the other, on a proposal from MWN.
“City staff and MWN are using every last minute to craft an agreement that will work for all parties… and that especially includes the residents of Long Beach,” Supernaw said in the newsletter.
The hospital needs to reopen by the end of April before its license expires, Supernaw has previously said.
The city will likely announce the results of the closed session meeting on Wednesday or Thursday, next week, Supernaw said.