The Seattle Times reported a misleading figure in its 9/27/07 article about the Hospital's proposal. It hasn't published a correction, so we'll do that here.
The Times wrote: "The roof of the tallest proposed building would be 90 feet higher than the roof of the tallest existing building."
The Hospital's tallest existing building reaches 80 feet above grade, while its tallest planned building will rise to 240 feet. In other words, the tallest proposed tower will rise 160 feet higher than the tallest existing building. This increase is rather a lot more than 90 feet. (N.B.: Several small buildings will grow by a much larger margin-- some will increase from 37 to 240 feet.)
How did the Times come up with 90 feet? The Hospital's FAQ, now unavailable, claimed the following:
"As the campus exists today, the tallest structure is 7 stories above grade, or roughly 80 feet above grade. Although we are still looking at ways to organize development on campus, assuming a 600 bed facility, the height of the buildings would be approximately 90 feet taller than the tallest building currently on campus.
So how did the Hospital come up with a 90 foot increment?
The Hospital only considered the height of the buildings on their uphill sides. Take a look at the figure published in the Times:
On the uphill side, sure enough, the height increment is only 90 feet. But is 90 + 80 feet really the height of this building? Few folks would say so. It looks like there's something rather taller (should we say "towering?") on the left side of this diagram.
You can see height increases just like this one on the last page of this Hospital document. Diagrams show at least one building whose height would actually rise --rooftop-to-rooftop -- from 50 to 240 feet. You can get more info on the range of actual height increments in
