MOSES LAKE — Samaritan Healthcare officials are continuing negotiations with the Seattle architectural firm of ZGF (Zimmer, Gunsel and Frasca) to work on exploring the idea of building a new hospital facility. Hospital district commissioners voted to continue negotiations to buy land at the prospective site.

“We thought we could potentially have the contract here tonight,” said chief financial officer Teresa Sullivan at the Dec. 17 commission meeting. The negotiations aren’t finished, but hospital officials and the architects will start working on the project in January, Sullivan said.

The two parties will have an interim agreement, said Joe Kunkel, the consultant working with hospital officials on the project. “In the meantime, it doesn’t mean that nothing is happening,” Kunkel said.

“In January, we can already be starting work,” Sullivan said. The interim agreement will be for about 30 days, until the contract can be submitted to hospital officials for approval, Kunkel said. “We have some things, some pieces we need the architect to work with us,” in order to meet state requirements, Sullivan said.

The interim agreement will focus on the “work we don’t want to wait on,” Kunkel said.

The contract fee was not announced, but Kunkel said ZGF’s fee was the second-lowest of the five firms that submitted proposals, and at or below state guidelines for projects of the size of Samaritan’s project.

The first step will be preparation of a master facility plan, a process expected to take about three months. The entire design phase, from the master plan to a finished design, should take about a year.

Sullivan said hospital officials hired an outside firm to inventory the hospital’s existing equipment, to see what might be used in a new facility and what might have to be replaced. “They spent three or four days going through your entire facility,” Kunkel said. “They come in, they evaluate what you have, give you a sense of the useful life (of existing equipment), is it movable into a new facility, is it not.” That too is part of the process of determining feasibility, he said. The report hasn’t been delivered yet, but “they did mention you probably have a hefty bill in diagnostic imaging coming your way.”

Hospital officials announced in October that they were exploring the possibility of a new hospital, with the goal of constructing the building without going to district voters for a bond. In November commissioners approved the purchase of one parcel of land along Clover Drive (Road K Northeast), across the street from Lowe’s home improvement center. The parcel cost $1.2 million, and hospital officials have options on other parcels and are negotiating for others.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at [email protected].