Frustrations from this week's CAC meeting are still reverberating. Many neighbors feel that the voices of people who live in the immediate community are not being heard, particularly after the elimination of many near neighbors from the committee, largely due to the Hospital's pending acquisition of their homes. One neighbor asked us to share his suggestions for the CAC:
At the latest CAC meeting (7/15/08) I was very concerned to see how those who feel that a 1.5 million sq ft expansion is unmitigable in any form were effectively silenced by the committee chair after the break, the discussion resuming completely on the Hospital's terms. The word "unmitigable" was said often enough that it seems time for the committee to address the obvious question: in order to bring the height, bulk, scale, and traffic down to more manageable levels, what size expansion can be livable?
Based on simple arithmetic, a very crude estimate can be obtained for the square footage that the Laurelon site can accommodate to maintain the scale of the other Hospital buildings: six acres = a 250,000 sq foot footprint. Reduce this to 150,000 sq ft to allow access and open space (perhaps 125,000?), then a stair-step design contoured to the hillside built 6 stories high (similar to the other hospital buildings) would put the effective square footage per floor to be about 100,000. Multiplying by 6 stories gives 600,000 sq ft. Add some more for parking, etc. This puts it in the neighborhood of 750,000 sq ft -- half of the 1.5 million that are currently proposed.
Therefore I would suggest that the CAC consider a motion to reduce the proposed expansion by approximately one half on the basis of height, bulk, and scale. A further reduction of about 700,000 sq ft could be accomplished by moving the 190 psychiatric beds to a separate site, as suggested by Nancy Field.
