💉 Checking the Pulse 08/19/26

Inside former St. Luke’s Hospital: If you’ve ever driven to Bellingham on Interstate 5 and taken the Lakeway Drive exit into downtown Bellingham, I’m sorry.

I’m apologizing because for the last few years, this route has crossed a busy intersection with eyesores serving as rather forgettable welcome signs to town. You know the one: Lakeway Drive veers slightly right and turns into East Holly Street. As you approach the intersection, there's a Mobil gas station on the left. To the right is an unoccupied corner lot laden with fun dog and cat art. Across from that property is another unoccupied gray building that comes to a point at the intersection.

That property is what remains of St. Luke’s Hospital. It is owned by Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace & Health Hospital Services and has been since 1989, when Whatcom County’s two hospitals, St. Luke’s and St. Joseph, consolidated. The lot at 809 E. Chestnut St. operated as St. Luke’s Hospital until 1989, when St. Joseph (PeaceHealth) acquired it.

PeaceHealth continued using the space for many years into the late 2000s. Ultimately, PeaceHealth relocated or closed all of the services once housed in the St. Luke’s building, a move that welcomed a host of new occupants, both warranted and not.

Over the years, the former hospital has given way to asbestos and struggled with repeated unlawful entries. The building has, however, served as a useful staging ground for training first responders.

Why are you reading about this now? PeaceHealth is finally selling the property, and it will be purchased by a new owner any day now, my reporting indicates.

For the last year, I’ve had people curious if PeaceHealth would ever sell the property ask me about it and, in the process, share rumors with me. The more people asked me about the building, the clearer it became that in the absence of information and occupants, the building took on a mysterious personality of its own. At night, lights would flicker through the windows of the upper floors, and people told stories about their fondness for the services the hospital once provided to the community and what had allegedly become of the building.

I was told repeatedly that the building was infected with something and contained shell casings strewn about from SWAT training. I never knew if this was true or just hearsay that’d developed over the years as fables filled the void. That was until the City of Bellingham returned a public records request.

What I learned reading through a few dozen email exchanges regarding the property was that yes, there is asbestos in the building, and yes, the site has been used repeatedly by fire authorities and law enforcement for training. According to the emails, the asbestos is in the floor tiles, pipe wrap and “possibly the lath and plaster walls.”

As one first responder put it: “This is a huge super cool building, have fun and don’t wreck anything so we can come back. If it looks vacant you can train there.”

The emails also show that the building was the subject of longer-term interests, including as housing. Bellingham’s mayor discussed the site with PeaceHealth for shelter potential and housing, the emails show.

“The mayor and I have spoken to PeaceHealth about South Campus. They are fully aware that the city is interested in participating in their South Campus plans. They are aware that we are very supportive of housing at that site, if the hospital determines it does not need all the property for its own business needs,” a City of Bellingham employee wrote in a 2019 email.

“It is our understanding that until an institutional master plan is approved for their main campus, they are not able to make final decisions for their south campus properties,” the employee continued. “However, they’ve been open to the idea of partnering with housing developers — again, once they know how much of the property they need to retain for their future growth.”

Three years later, in 2022, PeaceHealth submitted its letter of intent to the state to expand its Squalicum Parkway campus by 108 beds for an estimated cost of $336 million. The South Campus was not a part of the expansion plan. (PeaceHealth told Bellingham Mayor Kim Lund a shelter at the hospital was a no-go, the emails show.)

As with so much, it hasn’t always been this way. Up until 1989, Whatcom County had two hospitals. (At one point, the county even had three.) In 1989, St. Joseph acquired St. Luke’s Hospital, making Whatcom County a one-hospital county. The consolidation was actually well ahead of the hospital consolidation boom that ensued: More than 1,000 hospital mergers occurred between 2002 and 2020.

St. Luke’s General Hospital, which was originally backed by the Episcopal Church, opened about a year after St. Joseph’s did in 1891. Both hospitals relocated multiple times; land was constantly an issue as expansion persisted to keep up with the county’s growth. Eventually, St. Luke’s became known for its emergency department, and St. Joseph’s for delivering babies.

In need of capital in 1982, St. Luke’s was acquired by the HealthWest Foundation, a California nonprofit. The sale created the St. Luke’s Foundation, an independent Whatcom County nonprofit now known as the Chuckanut Health Foundation. Six years later, after decades of fierce competition and years of repeatedly failed merger talks, the hospitals consolidated, with St. Joseph prevailing and St. Luke’s living on through the foundation and its community impact, a building named after it on PeaceHealth’s campus, and of course, the empty old hospital on East Chestnut Street for sale.

As you may recall, in November we reported on former Whatcom County health department employee Mark Raaka, who was terminated following our investigation in September into the $102,523 salary he was collecting on leave amid two charges of domestic violence. A jury trial for that case has been delayed over a dozen times.

As of this morning, the case is going to trial next Monday morning. However, court documents from July indicate the case will reach a settlement before then.

KFF Health News: Using data that hospitals have been required to turn over to the federal government since 2021, consumers are beginning to see how hospital monopolies raise patient costs for everyone, largely by elevated hospital costs being passed on to insurers who distribute the expense, as this recent story explains.

Rachel Aviv: The New Yorker writer known for deeply chronicling human lives on the limits of profound mental illnesses recently published her second book, “You Won't Get Free of It: Stories of Mothers and Daughters.” I highly recommend it. (Bellingham Public Library has copies.)

High Country News: Ever wonder what heirs to the much-discussed 1855 Treaty of Point Elliot, like Lummi Nation Chairman Anthony Hillaire, think of defending its legacy?

Times Opinion: Kansas has a bounty on transgender people that should alarm us all, my former journalism professor, M. Gessen of the Times, argues.