Excelsior planning $9 million expansion

Excelsior Orthopaedics is planning a more than $9 million expansion on its Amherst campus to build a new, larger home for its growing Buffalo Surgery Center.

The new building at 3915 Sheridan Drive, just west of Harlem Road, would house clinical and surgical services in orthopedics, pain management and ophthalmology. The space in the new medical office building is three times the size of the ambulatory surgery centers current home in the practices main building at 3925 Sheridan.

The surgery center would grow from 30 to about 50 employees and would add gastroenterology services as part of its move from 8,000 square feet in the existing building to the 27,960-square-foot, one-story structure planned for the site, David J. Uba, Excelsiors CEO, said Monday.

Moving the surgery center to the new facility frees up space for exam rooms and other clinical services for Excelsior Orthopaedics in the existing building, he said.

Theyve got nowhere to grow inside the building, said John R. Yurtchuk, president of Matrix Development, the developer for the project.

The new Buffalo Surgery Center would be built on the southwest corner of the Excelsior Orthopaedics property. The site is owned by Preferred Equity Partners, a limited liability company controlled by Excelsior and Matrix, which are working together on the expansion.

The partners still are figuring out the final price tag for the project but they expect it to cost between $9 million and $9.5 million, Uba said. Silvestri Architects of Amherst is the architect for the project.

The state Health Department has signed off on the project, Uba said, but the expansion must obtain approval from several agencies in the town. That process begins Thursday, when the project is the subject of a public hearing at the Amherst Planning Board meeting.

The developers are asking the Planning Board to rezone 1.1 acres of the property at 3925 and 3915 Sheridan from residential to office building district and to grant relief from conditions put in place during the approval of the original Excelsior project.

The developers in 2003 agreed to the requirements for green space and minimum setbacks from neighboring homes, and they need the changes to make way for the 165 parking spaces they would add to the 418 spaces already on the property, Uba said. An application filed by the developers with the town argues that the project wont harm neighboring residential properties on Getzville Road, Campus Drive and Campus Drive West.

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Excelsior planning $9 million expansion