Hospital's Plan Changes; Resistance Does Not

An artist's rendering shows the front of the planned Suburban Hospital addition, which would be 300,000 square feet. (Courtesy Of Suburban Hospital Healthcare System)

"We continue to get phone calls from other people in the Huntington Terrace neighborhood who support what the hospital is doing and are very pleased that Suburban continues to make time and effort to communicate directly with each of the 300 homes," Borenstein-Levy said.

Deans said that the Huntington Terrace community is "absolutely united on this issue." He said residents support Suburban's effort to modernize and expand, but voted in June, 155-0, to oppose any plan that would close Lincoln Street, demolish homes, build commercial offices or expand surface parking.

Lincoln Street "is the spine of our community," Deans said. "Suburban cannot snap that spine without destroying our community."

The road closure would allow the hospital to join the addition to the existing building. The addition would be a four-story, 300,000 square-foot patient-care building with a surgical wing on the first floor, physicians offices and pre-admission testing on the second floor, and private patient rooms on the third and fourth floors, which the hospital says are important for infection control purposes.

The plan also calls for a larger parking garage, with room for almost 1,200 vehicles, to replace its 268-space facility. Now, 150 employees park off-site, and visitor and patient cars are routinely double- and triple-parked, the hospital said.

The hospital has acquired some of the land it needs for the project by buying up homes. Last spring, the hospital said 19 homes would be demolished, but that number has increased to 23 because of the new design.

"I wasn't happy with 19, and I'm less with 23 or 24," resident Amy Shiman said. Bulldozing homes for the expansion, she said, "just runs counter to what our residential neighborhood believes in, which is housing."

Suburban's plans do not specify any increase in its 228 patient beds. But the hospital says the expansion would improve the flow of services to patients, so that more people can be cared for and fewer turned away, as sometimes happens when hospitals are at capacity.

Norman Knopf, attorney for the neighborhood association, said the lack of additional beds raises questions about the larger need. "They are closing the main artery to the community, they are destroying 23 houses and they are not adding one more bed," he said.

Knopf said the community believes the expansion could be largely contained in a block-long parking area that fronts Old Georgetown Road.

In response, Suburban said it has used that area as much as is possible, given its goals to improve traffic patterns and create an efficient configuration for operating rooms.

The debate is expected to continue as Suburban's plan wends its way through the county approval process. Still, Deans said, the neighborhood hopes to work with Suburban to resolve their differences. "We're willing to work as hard as it takes," he said, "and as long as it takes to get there."