A hearing earlier this week in Hoover on a proposed healthcare facility exposed an ongoing struggle between city officials and a group led by the sister of a former mayor.

Testimony at a certificate of need hearing Tuesday dealt with Riverwalk Village, a new, mixed-use development, which would be located on a 90-acre tract near Riverchase Parkway that includes 450,000 square feet of existing corporate offices.

A component of the development will be the Riverwalk Health & Wellness Center, which city officials earlier this year said would offer healthcare services from pediatrics to geriatrics. Development company Healthcare Resources bought the 91-acre Regions Bank North and South Buildings.

To greenlight the project, city officials have to secure a Certificate of Need, which demonstrates a healthcare facility is needed and would avoid duplication of services in a given area. An administrative law judge will later make a recommendation to the state’s Certificate of Need Review Board.

Opposing the project is the Forest Park Group, which is being led by Loree Skelton, the sister of former Hoover Mayor Brian Skelton. Loree Skelton is also CEO of South Haven Nursing Home in Hoover.

Hoover officials say the medical facility is needed, given growth in Hoover and Shelby County. The project would also pump new life into the Riverchase area.

Further, Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato testified, the existing infrastructure is already in place. He said the project would accomplish the same for healthcare in the city as the Riverchase Galleria did for retail, and the Hoover Met did for sports.

“We didn’t even need to do a traffic study,” he said. “This is the best spot.”

David Belser, an attorney for Skelton, said Skelton had been engaged with the city, as late as April of this year, in a healthcare project at Stadium Trace Village in Hoover.

One aspect of the second phase of Hoover’s Stadium Trace Village development is a 50,000 sq.-ft. surgical hospital with 25 beds, along with 20,000 square feet of space for medical offices.

Belser also said the Riverwalk project doesn’t have a single letter of support from any physicians based in Shelby County.

An attorney for the Hoover Health Care Authority, Cason Kirby, said the reason for the opposition to the Riverwalk Village project is that Skelton’s project was not chosen by the city’s healthcare authority. He called the Forest Park Group “a purposely opaque company with no history and a dubious future,” using the CON hearing to build leverage with the city.

Brocato said during the Tuesday hearing that he has never contested a surgery center for Stadium Trace Village.

He also said Pat Lynch, a lobbyist for developer Broad Metro, which backed the Stadium Trace project, had told him in March the opposition could go away if he supported an incentive package for Stadium Trace Village.

“I was really kind of stunned he asked me that question because he’s my friend,” Brocato said. “I said, ‘No, I’m not going to do that. That sounds a little bit like blackmail.’”

In an affidavit, Lynch said Broad Metro had never “sought to intimidate, extort, or blackmail” any Hoover city official.

Belser said the city in essence took Skelton’s ideas for a boutique hospital and repackaged it into an economic development project.