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White
Bird Clinic at 341 E. 12th is in the "blast zone."
Ultimatum
It's
time for citizens to weigh in on Sacred Heart's options. Are there
really only two?
By
Alan Pittman
Sacred Heart Medical Center has asked that
the city bulldoze six blocks of one of downtown's oldest neighborhoods
and fork over $35 million in cash and other considerations.
If the City Council doesn't agree to the hospital's
plans by July 9, the hospital intends to pull about 1,000 jobs from
the city's struggling downtown and build a new hospital at the edge
of the city. City officials and livability advocates fear the north
Eugene site will promote urban sprawl and traffic congestion, and
cost the city untold millions to serve with roads, sewers and other
infrastructure.
"It seems awfully extortionist to me," says Rex Redmon,
a downtown advocate with the community group Friends of Eugene (FoE).
"It's very inappropriate for a non-profit organization that the community
relies on to be beating us around the back of the head and twisting
arms," he says. "That's very un-Christian."
City officials say they need quick citizen input to
decide whether they should give in to the hospital's demands. A hearing
will be held Monday, July 2 (see "How to Comment").
"Right now it's up to the community to let the council
and the hospital know what they think," says Councilor Bonny Bettman.
But citizens have very little information on which
to base their input. Big questions about the downtown and north Eugene
plans and possible other better options remain unanswered. The key
players engaged in weeks of secret negotiations around the hospital
move -- City Manager Jim Johnson, the city's lead planner on
the issue, Lew Bowers and Sacred Heart CEO Alan Yordy -- all
either declined comment or did not return calls for this story.
What little public information there is has to filter
through the spin of the hospital's PR person Brian Terrett and the
city's PR person Tom Olshanski. Both are new to their jobs and say
they don't know the answers to many questions.
Here's a run-down of some of the biggest unanswered
questions.
Other options
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How to Comment
The city is holding a "public forum" on the hospital issue
at 6:30 pm Monday, July 2 at the Central Presbyterian Church
at 1475 Ferry St.. It's unclear whether city councilors will
attend, but city staff will take notes on what citizens say.
To comment, citizens may also call 682-5616,
e-mail richie.d.weinman@ci.eugene.or.us
or mail comments to Mayor and City Council, City of Eugene,
777 Pearl St., Eugene 97401.
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One of the biggest questions about the downtown and
north Eugene choices for siting the hospital is whether they are really
the only two options.
Many downtown and livability advocates say the city
and hospital should pursue using its Willamette Street campus (the
former Eugene Clinic building) for expansion rather than demolishing
the six blocks.
The hospital's plans currently call for the closure
of the clinic site between Willamette and Olive streets as part of
its move north. The current hospital site on Hilyard Street will house
an out-patient clinic and administrative offices. Sacred Heart will
move 2,200 employees north and build a new hospital on a farm field
near Crescent Avenue and Coburg Road at the city's edge.
Creating a dual campus by expanding on the underused
Willamette site "just seems like such the obvious answer for the hospital,"
says Sue Wolling, a Sacred Heart intensive care nurse who heads the
Eugene Bicycle Coalition. Wolling says the Willamette site is only
a block from the bus station, includes surface parking lots and is
surrounded by single-story commercial uses that should be redeveloped
to higher density. "You can't beat it," she says.
The hospital has almost two blocks of land at the
Willamette campus. The city could provide additional land for expansion
by condemning a couple more blocks of adjacent single-story commercial
property. The city's old library site could also provide additional
land if the city paid to revoke a sale contract for the property.
During negotiations with city officials, the hospital
refused to consider the Willamette site as an option because it's
not adjacent to the Hilyard campus, city officials say. "They took
that off the table fairly rapidly," says Bettman.
But supporters of the Willamette option point out
the site is only a few blocks from the Hilyard campus, a far shorter
distance than the 4.1 miles out to the second campus the hospital
is planning in north Eugene. The two downtown sites could be connected
by a frequent shuttle bus service that could also serve downtown and
the university area, supporters say.
Hospital spokesman Terrett says the hospital might
consider the Willamette location if there's enough room for expansion.
"We are continuing to keep an open mind," he says. But it's unclear
whether Terrett expresses the views of Yordy and the hospital board
in this matter. "I don't want to speculate" whether they would agree
to a Willamette proposal, he says.
City spokesman Olshanski says city planning staff
are now working on fleshing out the Willamette option and will present
it to the hospital.
Another option dismissed by the hospital with little
explanation is whether it could save much of the six-block neighborhood
by building up instead of out.
"You could do the whole thing on three blocks if you
went 12 stories," says Councilor David Kelly, who attended negotiations
with the hospital.
But the hospital has asked that the city provide the
same amount of vacant land downtown that it has on the edge of town
for its 38-acre suburban design, city officials say.
Terrett says denser designs would cost the hospital
more money.
Kelly points out that urban hospitals of 12 stories
or more are not unusual in other cities. He notes the hospital's original
expansion proposal last year called for building up on the hospital's
current four-block site.
FoE board member Greg McLauchlan says forcing the
suburban design into downtown Eugene would be a bad use of land in
the city core. "We need to start building up and not out," he says.
"We certainly don't want to duplicate the sprawl option and just put
it downtown."
It's not even clear whether the hospital will actually
use all of the 38 acres downtown within the next 50 years. Sacred
Heart has called for the city to demolish enough blocks for the city
to have room for 100 years of expansion. A first phase will take up
about half of the area, but the rest could remain barren and vacant
for decades, according to city officials.
Councilor Gary Rayor says it would be much better
to phase tearing down the neighborhood rather than doing it all at
once and leaving half of it as a vacant eyesore downtown. With the
hospital's plan, Rayor says, "It will be sort of like a nuclear explosion
in the center of downtown."
Bad Faith Bargaining
The hospital's demands downtown are so extreme
that many have been left wondering whether Sacred Heart is bargaining
with the city in good faith.
"They've intentionally made demands that are unreasonable,"
Redmon says. "It doesn't seem to me like they've been genuinely trying
to find solutions."
Redmon suspects the hospital's demands and rush are
just a PR move by the hospital to make moving to the north Eugene
site look better. "I don't think they really had any intention but
moving north," he says. "I feel like they've taken the dirty, slimy
road."
Indeed, the hospital has asked that the city agree
to support its move north if a tax measure to fund the $35 million
subsidy fails.
"That suggests they went into the meetings with bad
faith to start with," says Dr. Rich Coolman, a Eugene pediatrician.
Coolman says he met with Yordy recently and he appears
unwilling to even consider a downtown site. "He did not feel like
an urban hospital was compatible with his and the board's mission."
The suspicion that the hospital isn't an honest broker
is widespread. Even some of the hospital's most ardent supporters
say Sacred Heart's proposal may have an ulterior motive. "Images of
bulldozers rumbling westward from Sacred Heart help make the north
campus plan look good, which may have been one of PeaceHealth's goals
in its negotiations with the city," The Register-Guard editorialized.
McLauchlan says Sacred Heart's unreasonable demands
may be an effort to shift blame to the council for the hospital's
leaving downtown.
Terrett does appear eager to shift any blame to city
officials. He claims tearing down the six blocks and paying $35 million
is the city's plan, not the hospital's. "It is the city's answer to
our 100-year vision" for a bigger hospital, he says.
The hospital's demand that the city decide by July
9 so that a tax vote on its subsidy can occur in September also appears
artificial, critics say.
"There's no question we're going to level six blocks
with two weeks to talk about it," says Redmon. "That [deadline] is
like telling the city, 'Go to Hell.'"
"What's the big rush?" Wolling asks. "If we're talking
about a new hospital that is going to be serving the community for
75 to 100 years, why do we have to make a decision by July 9. This
is crazy."
Terrett says the hospital is bargaining in good faith
and claims that delaying the decision past September will cost Sacred
Heart $300,000 a month in inflated construction costs.
Councilor Kelly says he thought hospital officials
were "serious" at the private negotiation meetings he attended. Yordy
and hospital planners and consultants were spending significant time
looking at options, he says.
But at the recent council meeting to discuss the six-block
proposal, only the hospital PR person, Terrett, was there to answer
questions.
Cost vs. Benefit
It's unclear whether avoiding sprawl on
the edge of town is worth tearing down the six blocks and paying the
$35 million.
Gary McNeel, the city's traffic operation's supervisor,
says due to a lack of information from the hospital, the city hasn't
been able to do a cost-benefit analysis comparing the downtown and
north Eugene development options.
"It's been really difficult to get clear and concise
information from the hospital," McNeel says. "There's an awful lot
of numbers floating around, but nothing seems tied down."
McNeel says even basic information such as the number
of square feet the hospital plans to build to the north and the number
of employees it may have at the site remain uncertain.
But McNeel says "it's pretty obvious" that moving
the hospital to the edge of the city will cause far more traffic than
the central location downtown with frequent bus service.
"There will be a need for massive transportation infrastructure"
to try to relieve the "gridlock" that will be created by the hospital
moving to the north Eugene site, Bettman says. Just redesigning the
Beltline-Coburg interchange to handle the added traffic could cost
$15 to $20 million, she says.
Infrastructure projects in other parts of the city
will be canceled to fund the hospital move, Bettman says. "It will
be where we have to make all our public investments for the next 30
years."
As the hospital and related businesses move north,
Bettman says, "the demographic shift is going to resemble a gold rush.
The north area is going to boom and the downtown is going to resemble
a ghost town." All the sprawl may force an expansion of the urban
growth boundary, she says.
But giving in to the hospital's demands would also
be costly.
The city would have to tear down 365 dwelling units,
40 small-to-medium-sized businesses, five larger businesses and 390
trees in the six block area to make room for the hospital. Many of
the historic buildings and stately trees in the neighborhood are among
the city's oldest.
"Your jaw just drops trying to imagine the whole thing
being bulldozed," says Gayle Hutchinson. Hutchinson spent seven years
renovating the 1908 home that houses her business and says neighbors
love the historic area and are organizing a fight to preserve it.
"I just can't believe this is happening in Eugene,"
Hutchinson says. "It's just unthinkable."
Bob Dritz, coordinator for the non-profit White Bird
low-income medical clinic, says his group is "in the blast zone" and
is staunchly against the proposal. The hospital should compromise
rather than playing "power politics," he says.
Besides the neighborhood destruction, there's the
$35 million subsidy Sacred Heart is asking. That's about the same
amount of money that the city has scraped together to build a new
downtown library.
It's unclear how the city could come up with the money
to save downtown. Kelly says that the city could waive systems development
charges for the hospital, worth about $3 million, and sell the hospital
streets and alleys within the six blocks for about $1 million.
But that would still leave the city $31 million short.
Kelly says a property tax or a one-year income tax surcharge could
make up the difference.
Such a tax measure to subsidize Sacred Heart may stand
little chance at the polls. It took four votes and almost two decades
to pass a measure to fund the far more popular library project.
Terrett says the hospital needs the taxpayer money
to help make up for the added cost of acquiring property to build
downtown.
But City Manager Johnson told the council last week
that the difference between the cost of the north and Hilyard sites
for the new hospital may not be as great as the hospital argues. The
north site could incur additional costs if the Oregon Department of
Transportation or a city hearings official demands that the hospital
help pay for road improvements to serve the site. Purchasing additional
land from the city and 4J to allow direct access to Coburg Road may
also incur added costs, he says.
To Dr. Coolman the reason the hospital is demanding
all the money is clear. "Greedy is the best word."
Stick vs. Carrot
The city should reduce the amount of money
it has to pay Sacred Heart to stay downtown by making development
of the north site more expensive, Dr. Coolman says.
"Whatever can be done to make the north campus less
workable for Sacred Heart should be pursued," he says. "Efforts need
to be made to not accommodating that site to make downtown more attractive."
At the council meeting last week, Councilor Betty
Taylor suggested that rather than condemning the six downtown blocks,
the city condemn all or part of Sacred Heart's 38-acre north Eugene
site.
City attorney Glenn Klein responded that such a condemnation
would be legal for the purpose of creating a public park on the land.
"You could do that."
But Klein said he's unsure how much the city would
have to pay the hospital for the land acquisition.
Bettman says such a condemnation move would likely
face strong hospital opposition and have little support on the council.
McLauchlan says the city should tighten zoning laws
and ordinances and charge higher SDCs for edge development to stop
subsidizing sprawl at the expense of downtown. "This should be a wake-up
call for the city to get moving."
"A lot of the city's zoning out on the edge is so
loose and vague you can pretty much do whatever you want," McLauchlan
says. "No city has ever stopped sprawl by just offering carrots and
incentives downtown."
Another approach would be starting up some competition
with the monopoly hospital rather than letting Sacred Heart hold the
city hostage, critics suggest. The city could create its own municipal
hospital or invite other hospitals to bid on the $35 million subsidy
to provide a hospital downtown.
"Maybe the city ought to start talking to McKenzie-Willamette
Hospital about moving into the Willamette site," McLauchlan says.
"We could actually have some competition in Eugene if we had two hospitals."
"Our commitment to them [Sacred Heart] should reflect
their commitment to us," Redmon says. "If your friend stabs you in
the back, is he still your friend?" he asks. "I think it's going to
get ugly."
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