LAKEPORT – Hospice Services of Lake County and Sutter Lakeside Hospital are pursuing a long-term lease agreement that would help Hospice achieve its goal of having a new inpatient care facility.
Hospice Executive Director Marlene Kurowski reported Friday that she had just delivered a letter of intent from Hospice's Board of Directors to Bill Kearney, the Sutter Lakeside's Board of Trustees, and Kelly Mather, the hospital's CEO, regarding the potential agreement.
She cautioned that the agreement is very preliminary, but she said she expects both Mather and Kearney will sign and approve the document.
Mather was out of the office Friday and could not be reached for comment on the agreement.
Hospice offers many services locally for those in the end stages of life as well as their families, including patient care, counseling and grief camps.
In 2006, Hospice served 230 families, Kurowski reported, and counseled 513 bereaved clients.
Hospice hopes to lease land on the Sutter Wellness Campus on Hill Road, Kurowski said. The lease term, she said, would be for 50 years.
Kurowski said Hospice wants to build a facility that includes an inpatient care facility, along with administration, space for bereavement counseling and volunteer training.
The building could be as large as two stories and 32,000 square feet, said Kurowski, although it may need to begin as a smaller effort which is built in phases.
If they were able to build two stories, Kurowski said one story would be dedicated to inpatient care for patients who don't have caregivers.
Currently, Hospice is only able to offer care within patients' homes, because the organization has no actual care facility.
One of the biggest construction costs for such a facility, she said, would be land preparation. The parcel at the Sutter Wellness Campus, she said, is essentially ready to build.
“We think this opportunity is the right one at this point,” she said.
Kurowski added, however, that everything is still “very tentative” at this point.
Hospice's very popular thrift shops in Clearlake and Lakeport would remain in their current locations at 14290 Lakeshore Drive and 1701 S. Main St., respectively, Kurowski said.
One of the main reasons a new building has become so immediate, Kurowski said, is because the thrift shops are so popular that they're having to turn away donations, particularly at the Lakeport shop, which shares space with Hospice administration.
“It's really pressing that we make plans for a bigger facility,” she said.
On the Board of Supervisors' Tuesday agenda, Supervisor Anthony Farrington had scheduled a preliminary discussion on possibly donating a portion of 16 acres of county-owned property at 15837 18th Avenue and 7000 S. Center Drive in Clearlake to Hospice for the new facility.
Kurowski said Hospice will attend Tuesday's board meeting to instead ask the county for financial support in the form of an $80,000 grant to move forward with their plans.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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