Warrick County Medical School Site Revealed

1. So, the students and faculty will still have to get in their cars to get to the hospital. That’s not ideal.

   Problem is, downtown still won’t be able to compete with that.

   It’s a shame our leaders will only respond to the RFP with a downtown project. They are about to blow it.

   • There are two apartment complexes withing walking distance of that drawing. There are a dozen more within a mile or two. My guess is there will be more and they will be unsubsidized if that site is chosen.

     • For a student, two miles is easy “walking distance.” It is for me, and I’m 66. I put in three miles on a “down” day!

     • I’ve said it before, there is a bright spot in all of this if Evansville loses to this Warrick location. We will still benefit from the school even if it’s located at this Warrick site. In fact, Evansville benefits more than Newburgh in the short term, arguably.

       There is a certain attractiveness to losing this deal to Warrick because we will not be paying for it, yet will still be benefitting greatly from it. Perhaps the Mayor is an idiot savant and somewhere within his brain he realizes that pitching downtown will will give us the best possible scenario – losing the school just across the county line to Warrick.

   • They can walk easily. These kids walk farther than this on the IU campus as well as many other University Campuses in this Country. These are 18 and 22 year old KIDS. They have a lot of energy and can even ride a bike. They don’t need to drive a car across the Lloyd to get to Gateway Hospital from the proposed location. They could even have a bus that takes them to the hospital from the IU Medical School Campus.

     Even if they were to drive their cars from the school to the Hospital it would be a shorter commute that if they located the school anywhere else.

     This is an ideal spot for the Medical School IMHO and IU would be foolish to know build the school in Warrick County. That way they won’t have to deal with the horrible politics in Evansville or Vanderburgh County. Most of the smart people moved out of the city years ago. Don’t expect their kids to want to reverse that trend. 🙂

     Warrick County officials have their ducks in order.

     • Not exactly an ideal location, and not just because there are no sidewalks from the closest apartments (nearly a mile away), no crosswalks over the new four lanes plus turn lanes and decel lanes of Epworth Rd., and because walkers to the med. center then would have to walk across the busiest intersection of the Lloyd to get to Deaconess Gateway, etc. Those are minor obstacles that Warrick might possibly overcome by expending plenty of public funds.

       The bigger problem is storm water drainage, which Warrick County appears to have failed to address when widening Epworth and Oak Grove roadways. It doesn’t appear they increased the capacity of Howard Ditch, and I don’t think they increased the capacity of the culverts that carry that ditch under Epworth and its tributaries under Oak Grove.

       Howard Ditch and the land it drains is significantly lower down in the floodplain than land immediately adjacent inside the City of Evansville just west of I-164.

       That means Warrick County Commissioners will have to require extensive storm water detention facilities, and that presents the biggest problem of all since the surrounding land lays way down in the regulatory flood plain. Detention facilities, whether open basins or underground storage beneath paved parking lots, will be impacted by tailwater from high water events, and by ground water which is very near the surface in the surrounding floodplain. Expansive detention facilities means greater acreage for IU to purchase, and more money for them to expend maintaining the standing pool of water (mosquitoes and those nasty geese), and surrounding lawns.

       Additionally, Warrick County has done very little, other than to whine and point unfounded fingers at Vanderburgh County, to address the chronic log jams in Pigeon Creek, into which their drainage system for the proposed med. center site drains. Consequently, upstream commercial and agricultural lands particularly in and around Chandler frequently flood due to log jams caused by uncontrolled logging and overbank clearing along Pigeon Creek in Warrick County.

       Yes, some of the logjams are inside Vanderburgh County too, but the Vanderburgh County Commissioners twice in recent years have proactively cleared massive logjams from Pigeon Creek at or near the Warrick County line, removing logs and other debris that drifted down from Warrick County. Meanwhile, the Warrick County Commissioners took their federal stimulus money over to Otter Creek and other more “politically sensitive” agricultural areas.

       Bottom line, the better locations for the I.U. Medical Center remain in Vanderburgh County where the County Commissioners have a long standing, proactive drainage improvement program, particularly on the East Side, or downtown where the City is protected from flooding by the Levee and its pump stations.

       • That is useful information that gives me some hope. Thanks!

       • During the last flooding event, which was actually threatening to top the levee downtown, the city could not find the iron gates to close the flood walls. I never heard whether they managed to locate them or not.

         Does anyone know the answer to that?

       • retention facilities——retained storm water facilities with set gauged elevation drainage out flow.

         detention facilities——jail, correctional complexes, supervised demerit room “elementary school.”, Nun with an 18″ classroom ruler.

         dixi.

         I have spoken.

         • storm water detention facility: a basin or underground tank in which storm water from newly constructed hard surfaces is temporarily detained and then released through an orifice or weir that controls the rate of release into the receiving stream or system.

           storm water retention facility: a basin or underground system that permanently retains excess storm water from newly constructed hard surfaces, and releasing the stored storm water only through evaporation or recharging of ground water, except in situations where the inflow exceeds the design storm volume.

           Now you can go back to your Latin quipping. Sic semper non sequiturus.

     • I’m tickled Coyote: An ole market hunter once coined something about how he liked having the ducks in a row.

       It usually put “more ducks on the table per shot”.
       That was a table hunters point of view about the ducks and sort.
       The “29 crash”, Depression days,ammunition was “like money spent” I suppose.
       Like the duck stories,they usually make lots of spot on reckoning sense.
       Around your local parts its “the ducks migration paths” that count when your talking location,location. Find the reasons for those that’s where the ducks will be found. 😉

2. “So, the students and faculty will still have to get in their cars to get to the hospital. That’s not ideal.”

   Shuttle busses to hospitals and probably use their cars to their living arrangements. Not that much of an inconvenience in today’s society I wouldn’t think.

   • A pedestrian “bridge” over Epworth Rd. is also a possibility.

     • They would have to build one over the Lloyd or a tunnel under the Lloyd maybe. Not sure how that would work or how much it would cost vs a overhead walkway. People tend to not use the overhead walkways as they have to climb stairs to get up to the elevated platform. Example. If you drive down Riverside Drive and go past the Trop you will see many people jay walking across the street even though there are two walkways over the road at that location. Of course if the city keeps closing down Riverside drive at 2nd and Fulton Ave you won’t have to worry about any traffic and one can cross the street without worrying about getting hit by a car. At least on the Southbound Lane. The city tends to block that road at 2nd street all the time anymore. Any tom dick and harry can hold a party and get the Mayor to close down Riverside and the Riverfront. I think that really sucks except for one or maybe two major events like the Freedom Festival Event that we use to have until GAGE screwed that up.

       • There would have to be a pedestrian bridge. Crossing the highway there is not safe. Someone will eventually get killed if pedestrian traffic becomes routine. There would have to be a bridge over the Lloyd.

         On another note, you’re wrong about GAGE being at fault for the collapse of the Freedom Festival. It was already in massive debt when they took it over.

   • I’m just looking at it from an advantage standpoint. There is no advantage to this site over a State Hospital site, for example, if students will need to use buses to get from classrooms to teaching beds. Surely this is a consideration worth noting.

     • It is worth noting that St. Mary’s is now owned by an outside hospital conglomerate that has been cutting back its local employment base. It is also worth noting that St. Mary’s has religious affiliation. Those are are not sufficient to disqualify them from consideration but a single location that has Deaconess, St. Mary’s, and Riley along with a multitude of specialty clinics is something that Evansville cannot compete with period.

       • The closest we get to competing with this site is the ESH campus/Roberts area which has the Red Cross, the State Mental Hospital and St. Mary’s all within walking/biking distance with plenty of trees and recreation nearby. There is also easy access to the Lloyd via Vann and Stockwell, which will take commuters anywhere they want to go. It is centrally located between both Deaconess facilities.

         • Wow! We’re in total agreement on THIS one and the hotel. That’s pretty bipartisan of the old lefty woman and the young rightie man!!

         • Though I’m a Republican, I’m a libertarian Republican, so we would probably find quite a lot upon which we agree, especially in the areas of social issues.

           I don’t see Party. I just see rational or irrational arguments and I try to call ’em like I see ’em on a case by case basis.

         • Brad: Epworth and the I-164/69 is key to the plan from what you can see through GIS.
           The Lloyd isn’t anything to bring attention too,its an complete fail on true throughput. My goodness neither is the poor infrastructure downtown as it stands today. That “can be improved” by utilizing what you have now with a throughput commerce plan. That’s not hard stuff to activate,it takes some simple transitions forward in old stationary traditional thinking.

           Now, if lynch was connected to Diamond with a design plan for commerce throughput to the University Parkway maybe either site would be more viable.
           The traffic throughput becomes a fail once everything funnels to the western Lloyd from about the overpass over the creek out.
           Needs work for effective movement forward. adjust or remove the Walbash ave.stop light. You need to get the traffic moving to the west and east with throughput timing to be effective.

           By the way,as I see this from afar,one really thinks more along the lines of an metro based plan rather than the closed inputs by purposed certain districts.
           The post from (stormy waters) has some small valid points,however those seem driven with a biased view for the downtown location.
           Where the point of view fails is, anything anywhere on the planet can easily be designed forward for the storm water planning. 🙂

           The whole metro area is suffering from the lack of foresight in the planning for just what is going to be taken to task by any of your local storm water management issues forward say 2025.

           That is exactly where in the problem lays. The Howard ditch and Pigeon creek are all tributary type inputs to the basin as a whole unit.
           Management of the storm inputs down stream should start downstream and work up,that is not what has been done historically in your metro area. The planning is always an small upstream application build to control just the current construction by landscape abstracts and localized drainage. (big time historical fail.)

           Never mind that ten years from now someone else will add a system to that and overwhelm its capabilities.
           Don’t believe that? Its this simple go to your bath tub and open the drain fully open turn on the water and when it begins to reach the overflow drain for overfill protection,do this, bring the hose in from out side and turn that on into the tub. Stay there,shut them both off before the tub tops its rim.
           You can build all the retention tanks you want, However until the outflow and inputs are balanced for the whole basin totals, something somewhere there in the basin “is going to get overflowed”.
           Where sewers are combined, “smelly,nasty and chemical,and biologically contaminated.”
           Pump stations are only as good as the capacity of design,and if the Ohio is at the flood wall that’s all you have.
           This has an easy fix,its old science,however with an interesting application moved forward.

           Won’t fail,hasn’t yet,the almighty designed it,works in nature. 🙂

         • Lynch through to Diamond or Mill Road was nixed by Sarto Retreat and County Counciman Tom Shetler, purely for selfish reasons. They both own land they might have to give up a few measly feet for right-of-way.

           Lynch through to Mill Road is the answer, though, as it would revitalize North Park, and Mill Road eventually does connect into Diamond right at University Parkway.

         • Greenriver.RR: Look at the Vectren easement just north of lynch from altitude GIS, or the addition of an slightly elevated highway throughput across the county owned jail property and south over the creek and connected where the road Cardinal drive touches Diamond.
           The mill road corridor is not set in access infrastructure for that amount of traffic moved forward.
           However the other option is because it would involve state highway routing.
           The fact that you could connect lynch and Diamond over the creek east of the golf course is also thinking forward due to landscape structuring to accept an advanced north side combination sewer plant, ones partially there already.
           Set that addition nearby to incrementally address CSO while your opening a northern throughput to start a leap forward in the north side logistical advantages for students and commerce and the genaral population there.
           Don’t forget about the Ivy Tech. role in the overall planning of such an campus.

           “scientia non habet inimicum nisp.”

           “science has no enemies but the ignorant.”

         • Your proposed routing involves too many floodplain and floodway issues as well as need for super expensive bridges. Also, I don’t know why you always insert CSO and other issues not necessarily relevant to road building. You can take the big picture too far, and completely blow any project out of the water.

         • I’m not following you guys on the Lynch to Diamond idea. The only way those two roads could possibly be connected is via Oak Hill which wouldn’t really make a straight east/west connector. I don’t even know how the greenway is going to fit through there (not that I expect that to be an issue for a while).

         • Green river RR: Stop and think, then look at your screen name. What, if that larger more assertive overall CSO plan was blended with migration paths forward to the planning on north green rivers “super expensive new failing apart bridge” and “the raised super expensive flood plain sinking,stinking roadway approach” to it?
           That stinking,sinking funds road could have been conceptualized engineered,built and moved forward while meeting the drainage and CSO issues confronting it while building the advanced road infrastructure to accept flood plain issues forward.—>
           Your planners didn’t look at the big picture then, and they are not now.<—-
           Result,An romper room engineered washboard fractional rear end bridge and approach roadway. Sounds like your rear end,and your vehicles suspension is witness in testament too daily, from what one gathers from that screen name.

           "Gutta cavat lapidem,non vi seu saepe cadendo" (ovid)

           "the drop excavates the stone not with force but by falling often"

         • V-is-to-R, there is no CSO associated with the new Green River Washboard Expressway. The closest CSO to Green River Road is just downstream of Oak Hill Road bridge over Pigeon Creek.

           Besides, the subsidence of the new roadway surfaces is caused by insufficient compaction of subgrade materials, and has absolutely nothing to do with engineered design or CSO issues. Compaction of subgrade materials is the responsibility of the construction contractor and inspectors.

         • R&RS, Lynch Road already is connected to Diamond Avenue by a short, half-mile jog to the south along U.S. 41.

           I was promoting a 4-lane connection from Lynch Road at U.S. 41, through Wansford Yard, to a new widening of Mill Road from North Kentucky Avenue west through North Park, and then on west, via an improved 2 lane (similar to the new Oak Hill and Millersburgh roads near the airport, complete with roundabouts, to improve narrow, winding, rural Mill Road, and to connect with outer Diamond Avenue just east of the new University Parkway. Get out a map and follow that route.

           But that’s just a pipe dream I have to reinvigorate North Park, and grow North St. Joe Avenue. Probably won’t happen in my lifetime.

         • Stormy Waters: The route at Hwy 41 and lynch should have been a design to go over the rail yard not through it. Also the short route to Diamond you specified is obstructed by rail crossings and two stop lights,which is classic poor throughput. The additional comment about the compaction engineering on North green river leads me to another know conditional,the creek went into record level flood during that period.
           As far as the CSO influence, the downstream oak hill areas sewage inputs are completely effected by the creek basin level and its drainage basin slightly upstream.
           Its the same basin, catching the same rain events forward,soaking the same substructure under the Green river road construction.
           Fix the whole basin issue sustain them all.

           Tuis pugis pignore,sic semper non sequituris,Tu quegue,

           “Vir prudens non contra ventum minit. farrago fatigus,ore rotundo…osculare pultem mean!” (quip)

     • You’re right, Brad, except for the fact that once students are doing “clinicals”, they often only are on campus once or twice a week, if that much. My suggestion about Roberts/ESH is based only on the fact that it is already publicly-owned land which would free-up more money to “sweeten the pot” with. That location is also sort of a compromise, with quick access to downtown, teaching beds, and UE.
       I just don’t want to see it in Warrick County, but if the “fix” isn’t in, we’re in trouble.

       • Believe me, I’m with you on the Roberts/ESH idea 100%. Not having to spend MILLIONS up front just to buy up land and demolish whatever sits on it is a huge leg up for these locations. There are so many advantages there, it’s hard to list them all.

         Our biggest problem is, this is the decision of the Administration. The Mayor owns this one. He is really the only one in a position to respond to the RFP, someone correct me if I’m wrong on that, and the Mayor has already stated he would “fight like the dickens” to keep the med school from being built anywhere but downtown.

         The bottom line is, this Mayor is acting pig-headedly. His actions are probably going to lose Evansville the IU med school to Warrick, or barring that, they will end up costing the taxpayer untold MILLIONS in excess of what the project should have cost.

         From a taxpayer perspective, Evansville is better off letting the project slip to Warrick than getting it downtown, despite what a consultant has said. Consultants, as Hunden Strategic Partners recently illustrated, can be bought and made to say whatever one might like them to say. They are almost never impartial. Their fee ensures that partiality remains a feature of anything they say.

       • EKB: Pull this up on GIS the location for a truly effective Medical school campus. This is darn obvious.
         The thing is I haven’t heard anyone else even remotely mention that plot of ground. Several acres at that.
         The location does everything for everybody calling out advantages,it is in Vanderburgh county,however has not been considered, I think.

         Myself looking from afar,find that absolutely incredible. I’m sitting back watching and waiting to see if the any of the leadership there stumbles on to it.

         (bonk! you could’a had a…..)

         EKB: Think about a V8 tomato juice commercial..bonk!

     • I agree, Brad. The City of Evansville has public transportation (METS). Warrick County maintains purely an ATS (automobile transit system).

       As to pedestrian traffic from the Lakeside Apts., can you imagine Warrick County and INDOT actually getting together on pedestrian overpasses over both Epworth and the Lloyd? Ain’t happening in our lifetimes.

       And grade level pedestrian crossings? At a 6-lane x 6-lane, high speed intersection with constantly moving traffic? Never!

       • Warrick does now have a bus system, because there is a “transfer point” at Gateway. The truth is that both counties’ lack of a good, efficient 24/7 mass public transit system is something that will need to be remedied for this school.

3. Has anybody seen the pasta sauce commercial on TV, with the woman on a zipline, who realizes too late that there is a monkey riding on her back? Substitute Mayor Whiney-key for the woman and downtown for the monkey, and you have a good representation of the situation we are in.
   If he is lucky, the “downtown monkey” will just nip him in the butt when he hits the ground. If he isn’t so lucky, and Warrick beats us out, the monkey may just tear his “political face” off when they hit.
   I cannot help but think that there is a political “fix” in, because of the Tripp Umbach recommendation for a downtown site. But, what if it is contingent on funding for the hotel and apartments, and the financing for them is contingent on the Medical School winding up there? Stranger things have happened in Evansville politics.

   • elkaybeee,try a herd of bronco chimps.. what about the sewer and water mess,looser ford center ,mesker amphitheater,roberts stadium fiasco,homestead tax, secret investors, evsc surcharge,dumb location for north new high school,looser centre, convention hotel, busted up roads,cronies,overcharged utilities, stupid stoplights, ball parks,north green river road sinker funding, new jobs, beat up stinking city parks, balanced books..speaking of parkes…think that zip line will ever hold that butt load of monkeys?

     • You have some good points, spud. Maybe Whiney-key is just an automated “crash-test dummy”. That would be to his advantage if all those monkeys hop on the line with him at the same time. I don’t think an ordinary person could survive that fall, but politicians are a lot hardier than real humans.

4. The guy that runs economic development in Warrick County, Larry Taylor is smarter and more professional than Winnecke, his staff, and everyone at GAGE combined. If this comes down to a game of wits, Evansville is unarmed.

   If it comes down to bribes, empty promises, intimidation tactics,and false job claims, sorry Larry, you are outmatched.

   • Intelligence and professionalism usually win out in a deal such as this and Evansville is not used to playing on such a field. Unless some one magically appears from nowhere to lead the charge for Evansville, we will probably be sunk.

     On the other hand, we still haven’t heard from IU and its criteria. We are all just guessing using what little knowledge we have of the situation. I think Warrick is just out there pushing to make Evansville show its hand, whatever that might be.

5. What are they thinking? There is no downtown at that location! They need to build it in Chandler, Boonville or Newburg!

   • They should take Newburg off the list, as its “downtown” has a habit of falling into the river.

6. Why would IU want to build in a field, next to a couple mish-mashed ticky-tacky office complexes? The Lloyd already has major traffic issues there and if you add the school, then Warrick (which doesn’t have the money) needs to build an overpass.

   Build the school downtown where the students can live within walking distance. I just don’t see how building the school in some crappy office complex really ads to our community. Besides, the IU study already stated it preferred downtown.

   • “Build the school downtown where the students can live within walking distance. ”

     Only if they don’t mind roaches and rodents, and being mugged regularly. That is unless they can afford “high end” accommodations, which most students can’t. Those people will be more subject to armed robberies, instead of simple muggings.

     • University housing is always expensive. On campus or near-off campus, someone is going to get your money.

7. IU has not stated to my knowledge which subjects will be taught here, which at UE, USI, IVY Tech, and which at Indy. These students will have to see patients in places other than hospitals. Much clinical work and learning must take place in “office-type” settings. This may occur in local physicians’ offices or in the new facility itself. Granted there will be simulation set-ups in the new facility but at some point real live patients come into play. And we need to focus on the people who will be served by this new teaching institution. The majority of them will be the working poor, the elderly, or those on medicaid. And they are the ones for whom transportation will be the greatest concern.

   Having IUMS located close to them might be a better way to start the discussion. But then, I might be way off base. Lets ask IU Med School in Indy which is located downtown and seems to manage just fine and has for years. Sure there was a history of crime, old buildings surrounding it, no great places for student living or at least that was true 35 years ago. Things change. Things grow. Lets look at and plan for the long term. I am not cheer leading for downtown. Just throwing out a new perspective.

   • Martha, all of the Ivy Tech health sciences programs will be housed on the new campus. The UE Nursing Program will also go there. In the long term, only USI has plans to keep its Nursing Program on the current campus. UE figures to be a major player, because of its premed program that will afford “automatic entrance” to the Med School. They will also have an Nurse Practitioner and PA programs on the new campus.
     IU’s consultant has recommended downtown as a site. The difference in downtown Indy and here is that downtown Indy has always been alive, ours has been dead for such a long time. Our downtown has no retail and very limited entertainment and dining options. I would like to see our downtown come back, but I don’t think this school is the right vehicle for that to happen. I frankly don’t see it happening at all, but I do want to see this school succeed. It seems to me that it should be where there is “life” and that is not downtown.

     • Btw, Martha, the Dr’s offices are not downtown, they are in the Gateway area and around St. Mary’s. That is one of the biggest drawbacks to a downtown location.

       • LKB – There are physician’s around Deaconess, in the North Park area, on the West side, and smaller family practices in outlying areas. There is also a huge Public Health area to develop in medical education now as there is in Evansville. From the comments made quite often, people seem to think that the East side is Evansville.

     • LKB,
       Trust me, Indy has not always been alive. We lived on that campus for 4 years many years ago and while there was certainly more to Indy then than Evansville now, it was not called “naptown” (zzzzz) for nothing. I too want to see this project succeed but my point is that people seem to be wasting a whole lot of time speculating on where and how without the appropriate data. Anyone can come up with arguments for any site. But we don’t have a way of knowing now all the details of what IU wants and needs. It gets old to rehash the same stuff.

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