PALMDALE : Hospital to Be Sold; New Center Planned

The owners of Palmdale’s only hospital say they will sell it within the week, moving ahead stalled plans to build a new $40-million medical center in the city.

Affiliated Medical Enterprises, which currently owns Palmdale Hospital Medical Center and four hospitals elsewhere, has been in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Executives of the company, based in the city of Orange, said Wednesday that the Palmdale hospital and its Ojai Valley Community Hospital are being sold to Lapesch & Co., an Idaho firm, for an undisclosed price.

Dr. LeRoy Pesch, 61, chairman of Lapesch & Co., said Wednesday that he expects the sale to be completed within a week and hopes to break ground on the first phase of a new Palmdale hospital--an outpatient clinic--within six months. The completed hospital will open within two years.

The current hospital in the southern part of the city has 123 beds and 400 employees. The Lapesch company plans to carry out Affiliated’s plans to build a 243-bed facility on a 23-acre site in the northern part of the city, on Avenue P, west of Division Street. Affiliated already owned the land, which will be included in the sale to Lapesch.

“It’s an area that needs a hospital and it needs a better one than it’s got now,” Pesch said.