On a cold, raw Friday, the news hit Braddock like death in the family. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center said it will close the hospital there.

A critical part of the town since 1906, the hospital weathered the rise and fall of the steel industry along with the people. By UPMC's description, the hospital served 180,000 residents from 25 Mon Valley communities.

As UPMC Braddock it had 600 employees and 100 volunteers and packed a regional economic punch of $124 million a year. Not anymore. Clinical operations will start to be moved next month and the place will close Jan. 31.

The health-care giant said admissions have been down by 21 percent since 2004 and the average daily census of 51 is well below the level of sustainability. These and other numbers have translated into $27 million in losses for UPMC Braddock in the last six years.

While corporations must cut their losses, the overall success of the region's largest employer is no secret. In its last fiscal year, ending June 30, UPMC saw $653 million in revenue growth to $7.7 billion. As with most American investors, its portfolio got hammered by the general economic downturn, but by the second quarter of calendar 2009 its investments had gained $400 million. While it posted a slim $5 million profit in fiscal 2008, it hauled in record profits of $612 million a year earlier.

No wonder its expansion plans remain ambitious. It's proposed an $830 million biodefense center that would produce vaccines in Allegheny County, if it can get $580 million from the government to go along with $250 million from UPMC. It's moving ahead with construction of a new 296,000-square-foot hospital in Monroeville. And it runs a hospital and two cancer centers in Ireland and a transplant hospital in Palermo, Italy. It reached agreement to manage two hospitals in Cyprus and it provides emergency medical services and training for three hospitals in Qatar.

No one denies the impact -- in health care or jobs -- of the global enterprise headquartered atop the U.S. Steel Building. Its commitment of $100 million to the Pittsburgh Promise scholarship program is a prominent way UPMC invests locally.

But sustaining hospitals in places like Braddock and McKeesport, which have been hit hard economically and are desperate for rebirth, was another way for UPMC to take a stake in Pittsburgh. Last week it took a stake, all right, and drove it through the heartfelt hopes of a town desperate to come back.

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