City and PeaceHealth officials met with concerned community members Tuesday night at Central Presbyterian Church to discuss issues surrounding the possible expansion of Sacred Heart Hospital’s downtown campus.
The meeting comes less than two weeks before the July 9 deadline to include a bond measure on the Sept. 18 special election ballot. The proposed bond measure would ask taxpayers to cover a majority of the city’s costs in keeping Sacred Heart Medical Center downtown.
“What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to work in good faith with the city of Eugene on a process that looks at the alternatives of keeping us downtown,” PeaceHealth spokesman Brian Terrett said. “Our first choice, which we announced on March 9, is the north campus, but if the city wants to propose a solution to keep us downtown that’s acceptable to the community, then we’ll look at that agreement.”
City officials, PeaceHealth and community members alike agree that Sacred Heart is in desperate need of an update to prepare for the next 100 years of health care.
PeaceHealth, a Washington-based organization that owns Sacred Heart, proposed plans in March to build a more than 500-bed hospital housing mostly inpatient and emergency services and employing 2,200 people on a 38-acre parcel of land in North Eugene.
The organization purchased the land at the northeast corner of Coburg Road and Crescent Avenue in 1992 for $1.8 million, and construction was set to start in mid-2002.
The downtown facility would have been remodeled into an outpatient, administrative and support services and enhanced urgent care facility employing 1,800 people.
But after expressing concerns about a northern relocation, city officials approached PeaceHealth with a desire to discuss alternatives and encourage compact urban growth theories.
At a City Council meeting June 18, councilors and PeaceHealth officials proposed an alternative plan to acquire 37 acres of land six blocks immediately west of the current campus. The land encompasses many apartment buildings, businesses, and historic landmarks, approximately 391 trees and the University’s Riley Hall.
Community members say this is reminiscent of Sacred Heart’s demolition of the 60-year old 11th Street Mayflower Theater in 1986, hours before a meeting with the Eugene Historic Review Board that could have declared it a historic landmark.
Citizens’ concerns include the removal of trees and historic landmarks, details of land acquisition and condemnation, relocation, and the possible mixture of church and state. Residents also questioned why the hospital can’t build up rather than out and why other sites were not chosen.
Terrett said because of seismic upgrades and the need to have adjacency to certain departments, an expansion upward would diminish the quality of the health care the hospital hopes to provide. He added that other sites didn’t meet either the space specifications or specific hospital zoning policies.
Expansion of the downtown site is estimated to cost $100 million more than the $300 to $350 million of the proposed North Eugene hospital. The timeline for the project would be lengthy, due to the need to complete it in phases as opposed to the four to five years for the North Eugene site.
PeaceHealth has asked the city to contribute $35 million to the project, $30 million of which would come from a taxpayer-supported bond measure, and to ease zoning regulations and provide tax breaks.
It also wants the city to pay half the cost of acquiring, condemning and relocating homes and businesses within the six blocks from Patterson Street to High Street and 11th Avenue to 13th Avenue. This costs are more than $40 to $60 million. PeaceHealth would agree to repay the city the cost and limit its development of the North Eugene site to only outpatient and limited inpatient services.
Most city councilors, however, have agreed only to make a financial commitment of $25 million, $20 million of which will likely be a property tax-supported bond levy the city intends for use in control of traffic flow and parking.
Should voters reject this bond measure, PeaceHealth is asking the city to support the move north and to help expedite land-use actions to build there.The alternative of expanding at the old Eugene site has been rejected by PeaceHealth due to lack of space in the area, no adjacency to the hospital, street placements and nowhere to move the nearly 400 employees in the building during construction.
When the controversy over a move north started, groups such as the North Eugene Growth Impact Committee, the University Small Business Association, Citizens for a Hospital in the Heart of Eugene and local doctors and nurses urged the hospital to reconsider, citing traffic problems the north would face, changing growth patterns, distance and the hole it would leave in the city center. Many believed the latter would be a barrier in the revitalization of the downtown area.
“I’ve tried to make sure that people in this neighborhood know what’s going on,” said Richie Weinman with the City Planning and Development Department. “I know the time frame has been short, and we’ve made an effort to make sure that people will know about these meetings and know about the discussions so they’re not terribly surprised by it.”
Tom Olshanski, the spokesman for the city of Eugene, also said it was too bad that many local residents were taken unawares.
“It was really unfortunate that it occurred that way,” Olshanski said. “It really is the result of a lot of work happening very quickly.”
He added that it is important for concerned citizens to attend another public forum scheduled for Monday, July 2, at 6:30 p.m. at the Central Presbyterian Church at 555 E. 15th.
“A lot depends on what the public senses and what they’re feeling out there,” he said.