By Rebecca Murphy

A 27,000 square-foot medical facility is in the works for Shingle Springs, and according to its designer, Ben Hatfield of Cool, there will be others built in El Dorado County as well, including on the Divide.

“I designed it myself,” said Hatfield, who was hospitalized for hip surgery in 2008 and was astonished by the poor design of the facility where he was admitted in Sunnyvale. “The hallways were too small for two beds to pass” along with other issues Hatfield said were inadequate for a medical facility.

Saying he was lucky to get the space at the Manor Care Rehabilitation Center, where he stayed for two months following hip surgery, Hatfield added there were no other places for his rehabilitation. That was also where he met his orthopedic surgeon Dr. Christian Foglar, who has since become a good friend and partner for the facility.

“When I showed (Foglar) the design he said it was the best he had ever seen,” said Hatfield.

Foglar, a former military doctor, performs surgery for free one month out of the year strictly for veterans. The medical facility being pursued in Shingle Springs will house 66 beds and 10 will be reserved for veterans.

Along the way to their friendship, Hatfield discovered Foglar’s altruism toward vets and the rest, as they say, is history; well, not quite yet. Although the nine acres on which the El Dorado County facility will be built is fairly secretive and not quite in escrow, Hatfield said he wanted to get the word out because “it is going to happen.”

Planning on retiring from the Bay Area to Cool in 2000, Hatfield said he had purchased his home but took a temporary job as a superintendent for a Bay Area construction company in 2002 when a load of steel was dropped on him. His injuries put his firm, Hatfield Builders, out of business and he said he went from being a big time employer for 27 years to an injured worker on worker’s compensation.

“I built houses in Palo Alto for all the big wigs” of the dot com industries, he said. An aerial photographer, builder and designer since 1976, Hatfield attended Woodside High School, Foothill College and San Jose State. Although he never acquired a specific degree, he took enough classes and acquired enough credits in architecture, engineering and business to get a license to design and build structures.

“Investors that I worked with before — former mayors of Los Altos and various doctors — are helping to finance the facility,” said Hatfield, who was in the Navy Reserve in 1962. Other investors in Los Altos Hills appreciated Hatfield’s staying power when his life was falling apart and he helped build and sell homes in a subdivision during a nine month period.

“The investors saw that I stayed with them, finished the homes, finished the landscaping and sold them,” said Hatfield. “I built that subdivision in nine months.”

With those people in his corner, Hatfield said he and his business for the construction also has James Althouse Construction and two additional doctors onboard for the facilities — Dr. Donna Arz and Dr. Kernan Manion, an Air Force psychiatrist. Arz is the head of the Forgotten Soldiers program in Auburn and . Manion has been a psychiatrist for the past 19 years.

“James Althouse Construction is the biggest builder in San Francisco,” said Hatfield. “He is a small business owner and very involved in veterans’ affairs.”

The best thing about the projected new facility is, said Hatfield, “We’ll have it in a country setting. I want to see cows, horses and lots of room to walk around. A person’s mental state is very important in the healing process.”

Although a site was chosen in Cool, it was shut down by the El Dorado County Fire Department because of understaffing. Other sites on the Divide, however, are still under consideration.