Butler Memorial Hospital officials in 1997 began considering the future of the hospital's campus on East Brady Street in Butler and Butler Township. Officials have been studying whether to renovate the current facilities or build a new hospital elsewhere, an idea that has met opposition from some members of the public.

Butler Memorial Hospital's Board of Trustees has been studying the future of the hospital since 1997, about a year after Joseph Stewart was hired as hospital president and chief executive officer.

The hospital, on East Brady Street — half in the city of Butler and half in Butler Township — was established at its current site in 1925.

Since then the building and campus have undergone expansions and renovations resulting in the current facility Butler County and surrounding county residents use as their main hospital.

Then in 2003, Stewart announced the hospital's board and administration were considering either a complete renovation of the existing hospital campus or building a new facility on another site.

Stewart said the cost for building a new hospital was $150 million, adding that it would be much more expensive to renovate.

He explained the current campus is landlocked and the older buildings are not able to accommodate new rooms, new technology or new services.

He mentioned the hospital was looking for land on which to develop a new hospital and other medical facilities, and that the Butler Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Butler Township was one of those sites.

In the fall of 2003, some Butler city officials and residents became upset to find that Stewart had attended a Butler Township meeting during which a tract of land, known as the Robinson property on New Castle Road, had been rezoned.

That led to two public meetings in December that year where the site was debated. BMH then hosted a series of community meetings throughout the county introducing the hospital's plans to county residents.

Public response at those meetings was that the majority supported building a new facility, but didn't think the crowded New Castle Road-Route 356 corridor was the right site for the construction.

In 2004, hospital and Butler Veteran Affairs representatives met with the federal CARES Commission, made up of congressmen and women, and focused on ways to streamline the VA health care system.

The Butler VA and BMH representatives presented the idea of moving the community hospital onto the VA's 80-acre campus in Butler Township — a plan the CARES Commission and the federal VA agreed should be developed and examined further.

In the meantime, Butler Memorial received a report from The Hammes Co., a consulting firm, that determined the hospital's best course of action would be to build new facilities away from the East Brady Street campus, as it would be more cost efficient and less obtrusive to patients than trying to renovate current facilities.

Some members of the community, however, voiced their concerns over the lack of mental health and skilled nursing beds in a new hospital, as detailed in the Hammes report, as well as their concerns that Butler Memorial would not be able to pay for a new hospital.

Since the Hammes report was made public in February 2005, the hospital has hired a third consultant, Astorino Architects of Pittsburgh, to research a third option — renovating the current hospital campus, but also moving most outpatient services to a new facility on Benbrook Road in Butler Township.

That report is to be completed and reviewed by the hospital's trustees.