FARGO – A Dallas-based company on Friday said it plans to build a $20 million, 55,000-square-foot rehabilitation hospital here to meet regional demand for physical therapy and other medical treatment programs.
The private company, Cobalt Medical Development, said the facility would treat patients recovering from a variety of medical conditions, from strokes to spinal cord injuries.
"We've studied the market and it's a statewide, and even regional, need," the company's founder, Eric De Vries, said of his reason for locating the facility in Fargo.
The hospital will provide physical rehabilitation, speech and occupational therapy, a concussion program for high school and older athletes, and a traumatic brain injury program, De Vries said.
The facility is expected to employ 140 people and open in spring 2017, with construction beginning in spring 2016. Its location will be somewhere in the vicinity of the city's Urban Plains area in south Fargo that includes Scheels Arena.
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City planner Aaron Nelson said Cobalt inquired with the city four or five months ago about locating a facility in Fargo. The city's inspections office did not find any paperwork submitted by Cobalt for such a project.
De Vries said the project is still in the works. He is looking to see if the city will offer incentives, saying it will "be very important for us to see how that unfolds."
He said his company is in the process of closing land contracts for the Fargo facility. Cobalt will build and operate the 42-bed facility, he said.
The facility will offer acute rehab, De Vries said, "so we take care of patients under the administration of a physician and it's three hours approximately of therapy a day."
Cobalt has facilities in Webster, Texas, and Overland Park, Kan., as well as others being built in Surprise, Ariz., and New Orleans.
