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Field
of Screams
Sacred
Heart's plans for sprawl carry huge
and mostly hidden public costs.
By
Alan Pittman
In its advertising and lobbying blitz for a sprawling
new hospital site in north Eugene, Sacred Heart has emphasized the
high cost of keeping the hospital downtown.
According to Sacred Heart's spin, "the public's lack
of support for condemnation of businesses and homes, as well as for
an additional tax burden a downtown site would require," makes the
Coburg/Crescent site the only option for Eugene.
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Spencer
Butte in south Eugene can be seen in the distance from the Crescent
site.
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Building a hospital downtown at the Willamette and
13th site could cost about $34 million in land acquisition and the
condemnation and removal of 102 homes and apartments and 243 trees,
according to a city estimate.
But what's the public cost of the Coburg/Crescent
site four miles north of downtown? Without any comparative cost information,
the City Council voted this month to support the hospital's move north.
Choosing a site without a cost comparison, "is a rotten
way to make public policy," says Tom Giesen of Citizens for a Hospital
in the Heart of Eugene. The lack of comparative costs for the sprawl
site has left downtown advocates frustrated.
Giesen's group has been pushing for such a cost study
by the city for months. The City Council drected staff to study the
north site costs. Giesen says the staff could at least put together
"ballpark" estimates of the public cost in new roads and other infrastructure
of serving the north site.
But staff say they still need a long-promised traffic
study and more information from Sacred Heart before they can do any
cost estimates. "Until we know exactly what their proposal is, it's
hard to know what the response will be," says the city's lead planner
on the hospital, Lew Bowers.
So, into the information vacuum, what follows is EW's
attempt to provide a "ballpark" estimate of the costs of the north
site, based on city cost data and cost of growth studies.
'Astonishingly Expensive'
"The north Eugene site will be astonishingly
expensive if anybody adds it up right in a forthright manner," says
Eben Fodor, a local planning consultant and widely quoted expert on
growth costs. EW's cost estimate for the north Eugene site
runs into the hundreds of millions, perhaps more than a billion dollars.
Many studies have shown the traffic impact of sprawling
development can be very expensive. The 1999 Book, Slam-Dunking
Wal-Mart! quoted a study by a New York City traffic engineering
consultant Brian Ketcham.
Ketcham estimates that a 150,000 sq. ft. big box store
will create 2,700 to 5,600 car trips a day. That "will directly increase
(traffic) congestion costs by $5 million per year, increase the number
of traffic incidents each year by about 190 property damage incidents
and 55 personal injuries, with one additional death every three years,
at a total added cost burden to New York of nearly $7 million a year.
Air pollution and noise will likewise increase: by more than $700,000
for air pollution and $80,000 in damages for traffic noise. Of even
greater consequence is the impact of big box-generated traffic on
other traffic. Those motorists already on the road will suffer an
additional $30 million in wasted time and lost productivity."
The city estimates Sacred Heart's Phase I, a 1.6 million
sq. ft. hospital on the north edge of Eugene will produce 35,000 trips
per day. At full build-out, the hospital will be about 3 million sq.
ft., producing 70,000 trips daily. That's 17 times more trips than
Ketcham's big box store. Multiply Ketcham's estimates by 17 and you
get a public cost of $727 million a year for Sacred Heart's sprawl.
That includes 935 traffic injuries and five traffic deaths a year,
$85 million in direct road improvements, and $510 million worth of
wasted time stuck in traffic jams.
Infrastructure
The city collects system development
charges (SDCs) to recover part of the costs of growth from developers.
The city estimates the first phase of the hospital will generate about
$2 to $4 million in SDC charges. But the city's SDCs don't come anywhere
near the true costs of growth, nor are they intended to do so. The
city's SDCs, for example, charge nothing for state, county or federal
roads and nothing for school, fire, police and many other infrastructure
costs.
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The
Register-Guard is ready to cash in on Sacred Heart sprawl.
The company has already plotted development sites on its land
near Crescent Ave.
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Fodor has estimated that Eugene's true growth costs
in capital infrastructure are about six times higher than what the
city charges in SDCs for a single family house.
Fodor says costs for development on the edge are even
higher. He points to a Lane Council of Governments' study indicating
that edge development creates four to five times more traffic than
development in the central city. The city of Eugene estimates that
the downtown site for a new hospital next to the central LTD station
could generate about half the trips as the north site due to the far
greater availability of alternative modes.
Fodor hasn't studied Eugene's commercial SDC rates
as extensively, but if they also trail true costs by a factor of six,
then the Sacred Heart development would cost Eugene about $18 million.
Phase II would double that cost to $36 million. If edge development
costs five times more to serve (with longer and more roads, sewer
lines, etc.), then the total would be $180 million for the sprawl
hospital.
Big Bill
An alternative method of estimating
the public cost impact of the sprawl site for a new hospital would
be to add up a list of possible capital projects that would be needed
to serve it.
One of the biggest projects would be a new $20 million
interchange at Coburg Road and Beltline, but that's not the only cost.
Here's a run-down of some of the road projects in the area that might
be driven by moving the region's largest private employer to the edge
of town:
-- Beltline/Coburg Interchange $20,000,000
-- Chad/Game Farm Rd. Connector $706,000
-- North Game Farm Rd. Improvements $1,900,000
-- Beltline/I-5 Interchange $55,000,000
-- County Farm Loop Upgrade $1,600,000
-- Delta Hgwy/Beltline Interchange $5,500,000
-- Coburg Rd. Study $100,000
-- Coburg, add two lanes for 2 miles $1,600,000
-- Beltline, add two lanes
for 2 miles $2,000,000
Total: $88,806,000
Many of these road-widening and interchange projects
could cause far more condemnations and destruction than anything anticipated
downtown. Hundreds of trees, homes and businesses are in the potential
right of way along Coburg and Beltline, for example. Ramps for a big
Coburg/Beltline cloverleaf, could take out a new office building and
homes built next to the interchange.
Another way to look at the cost of serving Sacred
Heart's traffic would be based on cost per trip. The city estimates
that it costs an average of about $755 to serve each created trip
with new transportation infrastructure. Multiply that by the estimated
70,000 trips the hospital will generate at full build out and you
get a figure of $53 million. If those longer, car-dominated trips
to the edge of the city cost five times more to serve, the total cost
comes to about $264 million.
But freeways aren't the only infrastructure the hospital
demands. A big new sewer line built to serve similar sprawl in Bethel
recently cost the city $2.8 million to build. If water and stormwater
pipes cost about the same, the hospital could cost another $5 million
to serve. A new fire station and pumper truck to serve the hospital
would cost about $4 million.
The city's ambulance system could also need a costly
fix. To maintain the four-minute response time critical in life-threatening
situations, the city has funded and deployed ambulance crews based
on a hospital located in the center of town. A hospital on the far
edge of town could mean longer waits for ambulances.
"Many times our units respond to emergency calls for
service while available at the [hospital] receiving point," Fire Chief
Thomas Tallon wrote the council recently. "A location on the periphery
of the metropolitan area can mean longer response times into parts
of the urban core."
The city passed a $19 million bond measure five years
ago to re-deploy stations to cope with urban sprawl. With Sacred Heart
on the edge of town, voters may have to pay another $19 million.
All these infrastructure costs add up to about $116
to $295 million. If you add in just one year of Ketcham's indirect
societal costs of accidents and wasted time in traffic, the costs
reach as high as $853 million.
More Bills
Sacred Heart, of course, argues that
its sprawl design won't cost the public anything. The infrastructure
improvements would have to eventually be made in the growing area
even without the hospital, the hospital says in its PR campaign.
But the city is planning for compact urban growth
and wasn't anticipating building most of the infrastructure for decades,
if ever. The $20 million rebuild of the Beltline/Coburg interchange,
for example, isn't included in the city's 20-year draft TransPlan.
Even if only half the low estimate of the infrastructure improvements
could be attributed to Sacred Heart, the public's costs would be at
least $58 million.
The infrastructure and societal costs also don't include
other big costs. Cost of growth estimates often focus on infrastructure
costs because they assume the new development will pay taxes to cover
ongoing operations and maintenance of the city infrastructure required
to serve the growth. But, as a non-profit, Sacred Heart doesn't pay
taxes.
The unfunded added operations costs could be staggering.
The city of Salem estimates that the cost of running one fire station
is about $700,000 a year.
If you assume ongoing operations and maintenance of
the new infrastructure to serve Sacred Heart would roughly double
the infrastructure costs, the public price tag could reach back up
to at least $116 million.
The hospital will also likely spur the development
of other ancillary medical facilities, fast food drive-throughs, worker
housing and other development sprawl in the area. State economic development
officials use a multiplier of 2.5 to figure the impact of such spin-off
development. If Sacred Heart's multiplier effect on the edge of town
is only half that figure, the total public cost of the hospital's
sprawl would more than double, reaching up to $1.9 billion.
That's about $13,500 for every man, woman and child
in Eugene. Not all the money will be paid in local taxes, of course.
Some will come in the form of federal and state subsidies funded by
federal and state taxes.
Most of the money for needed improvements simply won't
be found. In that case, the community will have to suffer through
the economic and livability costs of increased traffic congestion
and diminished city services. City infrastructure downtown and in
other older areas of town could suffer if the city diverts resources
for infrastructure projects to serve Sacred Heart.
Downtown is Cheaper
A downtown hospital would avoid almost all
of the heavy costs of the sprawl version. Much of the expensive infrastructure
needed to serve a bigger hospital downtown is already in place. "Major
arterials into the greater downtown area -- can probably handle
the anticipated increase in traffic from hospital expansion if alternative
mode use is very high," city planners report.
As an added bonus, a downtown location could provide
a huge boost to the center of the city and save Eugene millions of
dollars in efforts to revive downtown. "This one project would have
a tremendous effect on the viability of downtown," says City Councilor
Bonny Bettman.
The estimated $34 million land acquisition cost for
an expanded hospital off Willamette street wouldn't necessarily have
to come from increased property taxes. Earlier, the hospital, which
could sell it's Crescent land if its not needed, had said it was willing
to split acquisition costs with the city.
That could leave the city's subsidy cost at $17 million.
Three million could come from waiving city SDCs for the site which
is already served by most of the necessary infrastructure. City Manager
Jim Johnson has said the city could come up with another $5 million
without raising taxes or cutting services.
That leaves $9 million. That's about what the city
spent to build Symantec a parking garage at Broadway Place using urban
renewal funds. The city could create a new urban renewal district
to capture new tax revenue from increased land values around a new
hospital downtown. Another revenue option would be taxes on sprawl
such as a tax on big surface parking lots.
Developer Profits
The community costs of subsidizing Sacred
Heart's sprawl will be huge, but the hospital and developers will
reap big profits. The Baker family that owns The Register-Guard
may be the best positioned to cash in on the sprawl. A new hospital,
spin-off development looking for land and big freeway improvements
in the area could cause the value of the Guard's extensive
land holdings on nearby Chad Drive to skyrocket.
The Guard and its development companies own
a total of 51 acres of prime real estate along Chad Drive and stand
to make millions from growth in the area, according to county property
records. Editorials in the R-G have opposed the council's efforts
to keep the hospital downtown. The hospital has given exclusive "news
conferences" to R-G reporters and likes the paper's news coverage
of the hospital enough to archive and reproduce articles on its web
site.
The Wildish land and gravel companies also stand to
make big bucks from the sprawl. Wildish owns 86 acres of nearby real
estate just northwest of the proposed hospital site. In addition,
Wildish owns several acres of key Coburg Road frontage that could
demand top dollar.
The Chambers construction and communication companies
own 8.4 acres along Chad Drive. Developer James Breeden and his family
own 18 acres of vacant land along Chad Drive. Chuck McGlade, a Sacred
Heart radiologist and Gang of 9 member, has invested in three key
home lots along Coburg Road near Crescent Avenue that could be prime
sites for strip development serving the new hospital.
The largest vacant landholder in the area is the First
Baptist Church. The church owns 205 acres of land across Coburg Road
from the proposed hospital site and extending north to the McKenzie
River.
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