$10 million gift for women’s health, cardiology and imaging centers from Henry and Marilyn Hansel

Henry and Marilyn Hansel, owners of Sonoma County’s largest network of auto dealerships, have donated $10 million to the foundation that supports Providence Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital to help fund construction of health care hub for cardiology, imaging and women’s health.

The gift is the largest the foundation has received and the largest ever made by the Hansels.

The projects will complete the build-out of the new, four-story medical office building across the street from the hospital, the county’s largest and oldest hospital, where significant renovations and additions have been made in the past two decades.

Major projects include the $57 million Norma and Evert Person Heart & Vascular Institute; a $15 million renovation and expansion of the emergency department and the new, 5-story, 600-space parking structure across the street from the hospital.

Currently, only the second and third floors of the Montgomery Drive medical office building are completed, while the first and fourth floors are empty shells.

Rebecca Kendall, chief philanthropy officer of the Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital Foundation, said the Hansels’ gift will be a catalyst that “inspires confidence” and will trigger more local donations.

“When a family like Henry and Marilyn’s gets behind something like this, that says a lot and it says a lot about the trust that they have,” Kendall said. “It says a lot about the ability of the (foundation) to steward a gift like that.”

Hansel Auto Group, with $600 million in sales last year, includes six dealerships in Santa Rosa and two in Petaluma. With 500 workers, it is one of the largest employers in the county.

The Hansels stated that their contribution serves to strengthen a crucial health care institution in the North Bay, which has significant connections to their family.

Two of Henry and Marilyn’s children and nine of their grandchildren were born at Memorial, and Henry said the hospital was an important resource for his mother Alyce Hansel as she got older.

“We were looking for that one project that we think can make a long-term impact,” he said.

Henry, who is president of Hansel Auto Group, said he and his wife wanted that project to “serve everybody,” regardless of race or socioeconomic status.

“We didn’t want something to just serve the privileged,” he said.

The new imaging center will occupy the 16,000-square foot first floor of the new medical office building at 1162 Montgomery Drive, which will be called the Hansel Family Care Center. The cardiology center will be on the building’s fourth floor, which is roughly 20,000 square feet.

The two floors are currently empty, with concrete floors and exposed wiring and duct work and insulation on load bearing walls.

The imaging center will include the state-of-the-art technology and will replace the aging imaging center at Providence’s outpatient service center at 121 Sotoyome Street. The new center will reduce waiting times and allow earlier-stage diagnoses and more targeted interventions, Providence said.

The center will also include a breast imaging suite that includes contrast-enhanced mammography, which Providence says is not currently provided anywhere north of San Francisco.

The cardiology center will be home to local cardiologists tied to the Person Heart and Vascular Institute inside Memorial Hospital. Those doctors now work out of offices at the Henry Trione Medical Arts Plaza at nearby 500 Doyle Park Drive.

Fifteen Providence cardiologists, including a variety of sub-specialists, are based at the Doyle Park Drive building. The new fourth-floor cardiology space at the Hansel Family Care Center will host up to 21 cardiologists to help meet the region’s growing demand from an increasingly older population.

With space freed up on the bottom floor of the Doyle Park Drive complex, the Hansel’s’ $10 million gift will help fund the creation there of a women’s health center. The center will include a breast cancer program led by Dr. Lisa Tito.

The women’s health hub has been championed by Tito, a prominent board-certified breast surgeon, said Henry Hansel.

The total estimated cost to build out the women’s health facility and cardiology and imaging centers is roughly $45 million. The Hansel’s’ gift equates to half the foundation’s $20 million goal for private donations to the projects.

Marilyn Hansel said Providence’s Catholic mission and core values were key factors in deciding to make such a large contribution. The couple pointed to their Jesuit Catholic upbringing — they met at Santa Clara University — and Providence’s commitment to caring for the area’s most vulnerable residents.

Over the years, the Hansels have donated to Memorial Hospital to cover medical equipment. In one instance, they helped recruit an endocrinologist by funding a six-figure scholarship that helped pay off the doctor’s student loans.

“I’m really trying to just set up our passion for the mission, for the ministry of Providence,” Henry Hansel said.

The Hansels said they insisted that the physicians themselves be consulted regarding the design of the facilities and that the centers be designed for the future.

That kicked off a process where “interesting designs” by health care architects were reviewed and tweaked by Providence physicians. Though that work is continuing, Henry Hansel said, it’s far enough along that the choice was made to go public with the project.

“We’re getting closer, we’re hoping what we’d be able to start construction sometime early next year,” he said.

Kendall said construction is expected to last 18 to 24 months.