Planned Hospital Addition Riles Suburban's Neighbors

"They are trying to destabilize the neighborhood," said Huntington Terrace Citizens Association President Lorraine Driscoll. The association voted twice last month to oppose the hospital's plans.

Driscoll said Suburban could accomplish its modernization without closing Lincoln Street or tearing down houses that separate the hospital from the neighborhood.

Suburban officials told neighbors at a recent meeting that they planned to tear down 19 of 27 houses they own, although a hospital spokeswoman said last week those numbers are not firm.

There also are tensions over noise. The decibel level of the hospital's rooftop heating and cooling system recently was found to violate county law. An expert hired by the hospital took measurements that were lower than the county's and that he said did not violate the law. Next week, the regulators and the hospital will measure anew, hospital spokeswoman Ronna Borenstein-Levy said.

Louise Vann, who has lived near the hospital for more than 50 years, said the effects of the expansion will likely not be as dramatic as some of her neighbors fear. She expects that the hospital will surround the facility with greenery and that construction noises won't be any more annoying than others in the neighborhood.

"I do understand some of their problems, but I feel those problems are small in comparison to the good that the hospital will do for us," Vann said.

Gragnolati pointed to a panel of area residents that the hospital used to vet possible expansion plans, and Borenstein-Levy said the hospital has received about 5,000 expressions of support. The panel suggested that the hospital put extra parking next to Old Georgetown Road rather than close to the neighbors. It appears that the hospital has dropped plans for below-ground parking, which many of the neighbors had endorsed.

Bob Deans, a board member of the Huntington Terrace Citizens Association, said the panel was stacked against the neighborhood. The only representative from Huntington Terrace, the hospital's closest neighbors, eventually quit because the panel seemed to be a "very cynical public relations charade," Deans said.

Some residents also accused the hospital of trying to muzzle neighbors by offering $25,000 bonus payments to homeowners willing to sell and keep mum in any fight over expansion. A hospital spokeswoman said it would not be a deal breaker if a homeowner declined to remain silent.

Gragnolati has also tried to persuade the county to limit neighborhoods' clout by changing the way hospital construction projects are reviewed. He has proposed limiting the significance that regulators could attach to neighbors' viewpoints.

That effort has been watched carefully by civic organizations as well as the county's three other hospitals that are in residential neighborhoods.

"We have asked them to please play by the current rules in place to protect neighborhoods," Driscoll said.

County Council member Nancy Floreen (D-At Large) said hospitals have approached her in recent years to change the process.

"There is some feeling in the medical world that hospitals are basically a public utility and they should not have to go through the whole proof that you have to go through" at county hearings, Floreen said, adding that she was undecided on the matter. "If the citizen engagement process is so onerous and has the opportunity to derail or cause a reorganization of the health care system, is that what we really want?"

Judy Daniel, the county planner who oversees Bethesda for the planning department, said the dispute is unlikely to be resolved soon. "It seemed like they had very little common ground, although both sides acknowledged that Suburban is a wonderful community asset," she said. "The future is a much more complex subject."