Operation Expansion Three Sacred Heart Construction Projects Have Neighbors Concerned About Congestion

Three construction projects planned by Sacred Heart Medical Center could change the face of the South Side’s largest health-care campus.

Neighbors who live near Sacred Heart are watching closely. They say they are concerned about traffic congestion and potential disruptions near their homes.

But there’s a sense of inevitability among longtime residents like Dorothy Alex, who lives in an older home on West Eighth Avenue in the midst of the hospital and medical complex.

“I can’t stand in their way,” she said.

Executives at the medical center said they are trying to be sensitive to the neighborhood while improving services for patients and the professionals who treat them.

Here are the three projects:

* A small motel would be built on the east side of Grand Boulevard just uphill from two fast-food restaurants and an auto maintenance shop.

* The former Southcrest nursing care facility is being gutted and renovated as the new home for Pathology Associates Medical Laboratories.

Pathology Associates is moving from the Spokane Valley to the renovated South Side site next August.

* The board at Sacred Heart has approved the planning phase for development of a children’s hospital as part of a west wing expansion of the existing hospital complex.

“We see a lot of benefits to these projects,” said Marilyn Thordarson, spokeswoman at Sacred Heart.

Neighbors’ primary concern is an increase in traffic and noise to their already busy streets.

Much of the neighborhood attention is focused now on the proposed motel for patients and their families, which would be built into the hillside between Rockwood and Grand boulevards.

“The harmony of the community is going to be disrupted,” said Mark Dreis, who lives in a house at 1103 S. Grand, just uphill from the proposed motel site.

His wife, Lindy Haunschild, said traffic on Grand already backs up during morning rush hour. Addition of a motel and medical facilities would only aggravate the problem.

“The cumulative effect of such a plan could effectively wipe out our neighborhood with the adverse introduction of traffic, noise, commotion and transient people,” Haunschild wrote in a letter to Spokane’s department of planning services.

The motel would need a special permit from the city, involving a government process that includes a public hearing and written comments from residents. No hearing has been scheduled.

The motel initially would have 45 guest rooms but could later be expanded to 61 rooms.

It would not have any driveway access from Grand Boulevard and would not include extra amenities like a restaurant, lounge or conference rooms.

The governing board of Sacred Heart - Providence Services Eastern Washington - is considering the project as a partnership with a developer who specializes in accommodations for medical patients and families.

No final decision has been made, according to Skip Davis, chief executive officer at Sacred Heart.

If they go ahead, the project would give families and patients from out of town another option for lodging. Of the people treated at Sacred Heart, 30 percent are from out of town.

“It’s a relatively simple building,” Davis said.

“This is not a destination resort,” Thordarson said.

The motel would be staffed by people trained to help guests with medical conditions, including people who need a place to stay while undergoing cancer treatment.

The vacant Bergdorf bed and breakfast inn would be torn down.

While the motel is still in the proposal stages, the medical center’s directors are moving ahead with the conversion of the Southcrest nursing care facility. Pathology Associates Medical Laboratories is a subsidiary of Providence Services.

Crews are tearing out the interior walls and fixtures as part of the $8 million remodeling.

When it’s completed next summer, the upgrade will house the operation of Pathology Associates, which is moving from its current undersize location at 11604 E. Indiana.

The business provides overnight testing for Spokane physicians as well as medical offices all along the West Coast. Samples are sent by air freight each afternoon for testing at night.

Davis said most of the laboratory’s 300 employees work at night, so their comings and goings shouldn’t aggravate traffic problems around the hospital facilities.

The business is a strong contributor to the Spokane economy with annual revenues of about $45 million a year, he said.

“The bulk of the work is done after business hours,” Davis said. “It’s a quiet, compatible operation in the community.

“The building will look better from a neighborhood perspective,” he said.

A parking lot for 220 cars will be built on the west side of the center, and it will have access through the intersection of Ninth and McClellan, which already has a traffic light.

The largest of the three projects is a proposed expansion of the hospital along the hillside south of Seventh Avenue. The wing would extend to the west off the north end of the high-rise hospital building and stand above the arterial route that connects Division and Browne with McClellan.

An old home that formerly was used as a women’s shelter currently stands at the southeast corner of Seventh and McClellan, where the expansion is proposed.

Planners envision an eight-level facility with five stories above ground level.

It would include a comprehensive children’s hospital, which is something pediatric specialists have asked Sacred Heart to develop, Davis said.

The expansion includes a more modern center for mothers giving birth with rooms that would have space for family members.

It also would include a new neo-natal intensive-care unit. The current NICU is consistently overcrowded. It was built with capacity for 27 infants but frequently holds as many as 40 and sometimes even 50 babies. Most of the children are premature infants.

“Families no longer have privacy,” Davis said. “It’s an extremely crowded situation.”

Another element of the expansion involves an increase of five surgery suites, which would be larger than the existing surgery units.

Opening of the new surgery suites would allow for the subsequent remodeling and modernization of the existing surgery units in a second phase of construction. With the new surgery units, the remodeling work could be done without hampering Sacred Heart’s ability to schedule surgeries.

Davis said many of the hospital’s facilities date to the 1970s, while advances in medicine have brought greater demands for space to contain high-tech equipment.

“As we gain added sophistication, there is demand for more space in O.R.,” Davis said.

“We frequently turn away elective surgeries,” he said.

The hospital expansion would be allowed under current zoning for the site. The city already has asked Sacred Heart to address traffic and other land-use issues through the city’s construction and building permit authority.

The hospital expansion is estimated at $66 million and would include offices and clinics for pediatric specialists as part of the children’s hospital.

“The concept is a hospital inside a hospital,” Davis said.