CPMC Unveils New Hospital Rebuild Plan

By Carol Dimmick

California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC) took a step towards its stated goal of providing the next generation of care to San Francisco residents when officials recently unveiled a conceptual design for rebuilding its three San Francisco locations, including its California Campus located in the Presidio Heights.

John Millsap, vice president of facilities development for CPMC, told 40 attendees at a Dec. 28 community meeting (held at the California Campus facility) that the project is part of a three-campus makeover spurred by the passage of SB1953, a statewide mandate requiring hospitals to seismically upgrade their facilities by 2013.

Millsap said that new buildings were necessary because the present structures were constructed before 1973 and do not meet the new state standards. He also said it was determined to be cost-prohibitive to retrofit the old buildings.

But the new three-campus model also provided CMPC's board of directors with the opportunity to pick-and-choose which healthcare services they wanted to provide and to design new facilities to more effectively deliver those services. The three-campus model tries to cut the fat out of the present system.

Today, each of the three hospitals provide a full compliment of services and are generally viewed as stand-alone, comprehensive healthcare facilities. Under the new system that will change.

At the Pacific Campus, which serves the communities of Pacific Heights, Japantown and the Fillmore, the new hospital will serve primarily as an ambulatory care center. The Pacific Campus is located at California and Webster streets.

The new facility at the Davies Campus, serving the Castro, Inner Mission District and Buena Vista communities, will provide continuum-of-care services, such as skilled nursing and rehabilitation. The retrofitted old Davies Hospital, located on Castro Street at 14th Avenue, will continue to provide hospital services until 2030.

The third campus at CPMC is the California Campus, located at California Street at Maple Street, will focus on in-patient acute care. The campus will also provide emergency services.

Rebuilding Plans for the California Campus

The first phase of construction at the California Campus will include tearing down the old Marshall Hale Hospital, which presently houses ambulatory care, surgery and skilled nursing services, and turning it into a facility to deliver women's and children's services.

During the second phase of construction, the old Children's Hospital, which now houses women's and children's services, will be converted into an in-patient acute care hospital. This building will also provide emergency services to the community.

The present parking structure will be torn down and replaced with a facility for medical offices and act as a receiving site for deliveries for the hospital.

The new in-patient hospital and the new women's and children's facility will provide a total of 491 hospital beds and the new design increases the parking capacity at the campus from its present 500 spaces to 1,000 spaces with a new underground parking garage.

The overall size of the new medical complex will increase from approximately 100,000 square feet to 330,000 square feet, which officials emphasized should not overshadow the neighborhood because about one-half of the building will be underground.

But neighbors, who came to hear the details of the plan at the December meeting, were alarmed and skeptical by many of the design features presented by CPMC officials.

Several residents said they found it difficult to believe hospital officials were sincere about integrating the new buildings into the neighborhood after designing a model with prison-like, large, unbroken walls and closed courtyards that would eliminate green spaces that are now open to the neighborhood.

"Instead of a plan that has some humanity in it, you come with a monolith. If I had a neighbor and he blocked out my good view, that wouldn't be neighborly. You are going to have a cruel confrontation with neighbors over this design," said Dennis Vigren, a neighbor.

Others voiced concerns about the size of the new complex, which they said would bring more people, traffic and noise to the neighborhood.

Many residents also voiced concerns that delivery trucks would have a hard time turning onto Maple Street, causing traffic to pile up on California Street.

According to administration officials, construction of the new complex is scheduled to be divided into two phases and should take approximately five years. Hospital officials are projecting that construction could begin in 2004, after an environmental review of the project has been completed.

The lengthy construction phase was also of great concern to many local residents.

"It's going to be a long construction process and hard on the neighborhood," said Ron Miguel, president of the Planning Association for the Richmond.

Miguel says that a tight planning schedule is needed during the demolition stage when buildings are torn down. He also stressed that the way traffic is handled on Sacramento and California streets is particularly critical.

"They can't close off those streets," Miguel said.

Another community meeting will be scheduled after a traffic study, currently underway, is completed.

The CPMC rebuild plan comes under the jurisdiction of the state, and an Environmental Impact Statement for the plan must past muster with state guidelines.