KPLU Local News
(2009-08-13)
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In a major setback for Seattle Children's Hospital, a city hearing examiner has ruled expansion plans would bring out-of-scale buildings and too much traffic to a residential neighborhood. The hospital says it could be forced to move out of the city.
The ruling is a victory for the Laurelhurst Community Club. The neighborhood, about a mile east of the University of Washington, has been fighting Children's Hospital for the past two years, through more than 26 public hearings.
"We were looking for a compromise. That's all we ask. We love Children's Hospital," said Jeannie Hale, the community club president. "All we wanted was a scaled back plan."
Children's says it needs to more than double its square footage over the next 20 years. Chief Administrative Officer Lisa Brandenburg said, it's all about inpatient hospital beds - which have already maxed out. "In what is normally a slow period of time for us, we have been at or near capacity for the last three weeks. And we've had that consistently for the last two years, where we are very full," she said.
Brandenburg said pediatric specialists work as teams at the hospital, and they can't be spread across multiple locations. Demand has been growing partly because so many more rare diseases and disorders now can be treated by specialists.
The city hearing examiner wrote that the proposal would set a precedent, by allowing tall buildings (up to 140 feet) and dense growth outside the city's official urban centers. Final approval or denial must come from the Seattle City Council, this fall. Children's Hospital says its only other option is to move out of the city, possibly to some new suburban location. The hospital is currently building new outpatient clinic offices near Bellevue's Overlake Hospital, but Brandenburg said she has no idea if that location would be feasible for a huge new hospital campus.
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