Children’s and Laurelhurst neighbors strike deal on hospital’s expansion plans
Seattle Children’s Hospital and the Laurelhurst Community Club have announced that they have reached a settlement concerning the hospital’s proposed expansion.
Under the agreement, announced Wednesday, the neighborhood group will withdraw its appeal of Children’s Master Plan and agrees to support the Master Plan under the terms of the settlement..
The compromise ends a long battle between the hospital and the residents of the surrounding residential area over the hospital’s 1.5 million square-foot expansion plan.
The plan had met a setback last fall when the city’s hearing examiner concluded the plan was inappropriate for the surrounding residential neighborhood and “inconsistent with the City’s urban village strategy.”
Seattle Children’s has argued that the expansion was necessary to provide needed services and has suggested that without the expansion the hospital might have to move out of the city.
The plan is now before the Seattle City Council.
The provisions of the agreement include:
- Development square footage reduction: Children’s proposal to add 1.5 million square feet of development is reduced by 275,000 square feet.
- No expansion of Children’s campus across Sand Point Way: Children’s Hartmann property, located across Sand Point Way, is removed from the Major Institution Master Plan. It may be re-developed separately under more limited non-institutional zoning.
- Children’s is still committed to implementing community benefits for Hartmann such as retaining the Sequoia grove, providing landscaping screen, and building a pedestrian/bicycle access to the Burke-Gilman trail.
- Fifty-year restriction on campus expansion into residential areas: For a period of 50 years, Children’s agrees not to expand its boundaries into specified residential areas to the south, east, and north.
- Height limits: No more than 20 percent of the campus land area will be over 90 feet in height and no more than 10 percent will be over 125 feet in height in the new major institution boundary area. No structure will be above 140 feet in height.
- Added Setback: The minimum structure setback/garden edge setback along the entire NE 45th Street frontage must be 75 feet, increased from 40 feet for a portion of that area.
- Southwest Parking Garage underground: The Southwest parking garage will be constructed underground.
- 40th Ave. NE mitigation: The traffic signal at this location will be installed before occupancy of Children’s Phase 1 development. Children’s and LCC will work with the City on technology and design features to minimize cut-through traffic and queuing.
- Seattle Children’s and the LCC will establish a permanent committee to maintain a good working relationship and resolve any issues that surface in a timely manner.
Category: Provider News, Seattle Children's, Uncategorized
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
LocalHealthGuide is a health news and information web service for Seattle and the Puget Sound Region. We are independent and unaffiliated with any hospital, medical association or insurer. If you have questions or if your group has an upcoming event that you would like us to cover, please let us know by going to our "
Add to Google
Some of the wording in this article could have been better written. This fuss was generated by the Laurelhurst Community Club and some in Laurelhurst and not the neighborhood as a whole.
I once lived near Children’s, and if I still did, I would have formed a counter group to make it clear that not everyone in the neighborhood supported what the LCC was doing. Some people believe that getting good medical care for children is far more important than how fast their property values are rising. Greed isn’t everyone’s core value.
These were the actions of a group of people with big mouths and little hearts. They remind me of a Laurelhurst neighbor who always voted Democratic because she believed that legalized abortion got rid of Asian immigrant children who’d otherwise be competing with her unambitious son for the better jobs. Anything to get ahead. Anything to put more money in the bank. Anything for to appear more successful. As playwright Oscar Wilde put it, they are people who “know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
The actions of city officials has also been less that impressive–particularly that hearing examiner. There were similar and perhaps more justified reactions to an enormous Safeway expansion in my Greenwood neighborhood, but they came to naught. Why?
Perhaps it was because Safeway pays commercial real estate taxes and collects a fortune in sales taxes. Children’s pays the far lower non-profit tax rate and collects very little in sales taxes. More and more, government policy is being driven by tax growth policies. When there’s tax money in it, they’ll level a neighborhood. (That was what the Supreme Court eminent domain case, Kelo v. City of New London, was all about.) When more tax money isn’t a major factor, they’ll pander to to the niggling, whining “my property values” crowd.
Sorry to be so blunt, but I know enough medicine to realize that these restrictions mean that over the next few decades some children will die and others suffer needlessly. If you want to point fingers, point them at the Laurelhurst Community Club.