The Genoese Local Health Authority have announced plans for the construction of new 218 to 236 bed hospital at Vallata.
This initiative is part of a general reorganisation of the Italian Healthcare system and is the first in Italy to take advantage of the potential created by recent amendments to the Merloni-Quater law. This allows for the use of project financing in public utilities such as healthcare.
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MERLONI-QUATER LAW
The proposal will provide a springboard for a public tender based on the highest offer. The “promoter” (as per the Merloni-Quater law) will be Pirelli & C. Real Estate. The latter will be entitled to exercise a right of pre-emption, should they deem it appropriate, adjusting their offer to the best offer put forward during the tender phase.
HOSPITAL CONSTRUCTION
The hospital will be designed and built by Pirelli Real Estate and will be completed by 2008. It will cost €70 million. Architects for the project will be the local Genoese firm headed by Luca Clavarino in collaboration with Andrea Bambini. Bambini is a member of a committee of experts headed by Renzo Piano. In 2001 Piano produced the “new hospital model”.
This concept, which will be used at Vallata, combines “humanity and high technological quality.” In the hospital at Versilia, one of the first new model hospitals to be built in Italy, this concept was expressed by using low build structures, traditional and high-tech materials and by placing special emphasis on a “green” setting.
The hospital will be built on the former Mira Lanza site in Genoa and the construction will take place over four years. Pirelli will manage it for a further 26 years.
Pirelli RE is one of only a handful of operators in Italy currently able to marry the specialist know-how of project and facility management to the necessary experience in real estate finance for the implementation of complex financial operations. It was against this backdrop, last December that the company presented a project for the construction and (non-healthcare) management of the new hospital over a 30-year period.
HOSPITAL FINANCING
Financial advisors and arrangers on this project were Banca OPI, part of the Sanpaolo IMI Group, specialists in the financing of public works and infrastructures. The firm has an experienced specialist team dedicated to project financing in the sectors of healthcare and public construction works.
The €70 million will be raised through a project financing operation set up by Banca OPI. Initially, it will draw on capital worth roughly €6 million and indebtedness of almost €15 million. Repayment of this sum will be ensured by the concessionary fees received during the years under management. At the end of this period, the whole works will be handed over free of charge to the Genoese LHA.
The remaining finance will be covered by the public contribution, in the form of both cash and real estate assets.
HOSPITAL CONSTRUCTION TENDER
The tender was posted by the Local Health Authority at the end of July 2003. Assignment of the concession should come about by the end of November 2003. Further to the definitive design phase, building works should kick off on 1 June 2004. The hospital will then enter service as of 1 January 2008.
