JOHN GASTALDO / Union-Tribune Escondido councilmen Sam Abed, Ed Gallo and Dick Daniels tour Palomar-Pomerado Health's "Hospital Room of the Future," set up in a warehouse to test new technologies that will be used in its new hospital.

Chilly if not outright hostile would have apt words to describe the relationship.

Yesterday, however, when three councilmen took a tour of a mock-up hospital room and met with the health district's CEO and president, there was not a discouraging word.

The councilmen seemed so wowed by the luxurious digs that they became instant converts.

“If I stay in the room, and I decide I like it, can I retire here?” said Councilman Sam Abed, who took the tour with colleagues Ed Gallo and Dick Daniels.

“If you are a big donor, we can certainly think about that,” said Michael Covert, who heads the health district.

The jovial exchange was a stark contrast to the testiness in 2006, when Abed, Gallo and Councilwoman Marie Waldron, who didn't take yesterday's tour, said repeatedly that they wanted to reserve the Escondido Research and Technology Center on Citracado Parkway for high-tech companies, not a new hospital.

Their unwillingness to bend prompted a hospital board member, Alan Larson, to remark that the council could either let the hospital go forward in the business park or kick it out of the city, where it has been since 1950.

In the end, the council voted unanimously to let Palomar Medical Center West be built in the business park, after the health district signed a memorandum promising to redevelop the old downtown hospital. The new facility is under construction and scheduled to be completed July 2011.

Although the new hospital's price tag is estimated at $773.7 million now – $242 million more than four years ago – no one mentioned that yesterday.

“We are going to be the only hospital like that in the country,” Gallo said after the tour. “It almost makes you want to go to the hospital. (The technology) is in the stratosphere.”

Daniels said he was very impressed. “This is a totally different approach to patient lifestyle,” he said.

That was music to Covert's ears. “We are building the fabled hospital,” he said.

The new facility will provide 300 single-patient rooms, each with 320 square feet of space. They will be equipped with beds that measure a patient's vital signs and wall-sized screens that allow patients to have videoconferences with their physicians, watch TV, receive and send e-mail, and post family photos.

Bed linen will no longer be the overwashed white variety common in hospitals. Instead, the mock-up room had a brown quilt with gold embroidery. Chairs and sofas had fabric cushions.

The new hospital will be funded in part by a $496 million bond measure that voters passed in 2004. The hospital district also plans to expand Pomerado Hospital in Poway and build four satellite clinics.

The entire expansion plan is expected to cost $1.15 billion, up from the original estimate of $750 million, which Palomar Pomerado officials blame primarily on escalating construction costs, and on delays caused early on by the dispute with the city.

The district hopes to reduce the figure to $983 million over the next five years by delaying completion or only partly completing some buildings, and by hiring a construction-management company that specializes in “lean” building techniques.

The new hospital originally was supposed to have 453 beds, but that has been reduced by a third because completion of a women and children's center has been delayed indefinitely.

Officials say the health district will have to raise more money down the road to complete the renovation of the old downtown hospital and to build the women and children's center. The center will be housed in the old hospital in the meantime.

When asked privately about cost overruns and delays in completing some projects, Daniels said he was frustrated but willing to wait because it means getting two first-class facilities in Escondido.

“I don't particularly like delays, but I understand,” Daniels said. “We will have a better facility even if it's reduced in size. We have 300 beds now. The women and children's center will remain on the present campus. That is good news for downtown.”

Gallo said big projects take time. Covert said everything is on schedule except for the women and children's center.

Angela Lau: (760) 737-7575; angela.lau@uniontrib.com