Highland
Hospital is planning a two story, 30,000 square foot expansion. Each floor
would be 15,000 square feet. The project still needs approvals from the City of
Rochester and the State Department of Health.
The
addition would be built off the back of the hospital on what is currently a hospital
parking lot at the end of Bellevue Drive.
The
proposed project is part of a long-range facilities master plan that hospital
officials have been developing. The plan looks at demographics and health care
trends to project future needs and the impact those needs would have on the
hospital over time, says Teri D’Agostino, a spokesperson for Highland Hospital.
The closures
of St. Mary’s and Genesee hospitals have increased the demands on Highland, D’Agostino
says. And the hospital is badly in need of modernization, she says. Some parts of
the hospital are 90 years old, she says, and the operating rooms are too
cramped to accommodate advances in technology.
Modern
operating rooms are about 650 square feet, says Mike Zanghi, director of
facilities for Highland Hospital. But some of Highland’s operating rooms are
350 square feet.
The
addition would house six larger operating rooms, D’Agostino says, and allow the
hospital to expand its current operating rooms. The total number of operating
rooms would stay at 14.
Highland
would also add about 25 new observation beds, D’Agostino says, for people who
may or may not need to be admitted. Those patients currently occupy inpatient
beds, she says, which backs-up the emergency room.
That new
observation beds would allow the hospital to convert semi-private rooms to
private rooms, she says.
“The new
standard of care is private rooms,” D’Agostino says. “People no longer expect
to go to a hospital and be cared for with another patient in the same room.”
Zanghi says
the target date to complete the addition is 2018.
Highland
Hospital also recently purchased 27 Bellevue Drive, which is adjacent to the
hospital. The plan is to use it for office space, D’Agostino says. The need is
critical, she says; the hospital has 27 programs in 30 different offsite
locations.
“The space
is packed so tightly that it’s hard to renovate in place,” she says. “We have a
real need at this point for office space — even office space that can be used
as swing space while we’re temporarily renovating other areas.”
No patient
care programs would be housed at the Bellevue site, D’Agostino says.
She wouldn’t
say if the hospital plans to acquire additional properties in the future.
Hospital officials want to work with Highland neighbors, she says, to get the
best possible outcome for everyone.
“We want to
leave our options open because we really want to sit down and have a really robust discussion
about what could and couldn’t be done,” she says.
Highland
neighbors are always on alert to the hospital’s plans and activities, says Mike
Mahoney, head of the Highland Park Neighborhood Association. The close quarters
mean that everything the hospital does affects the neighborhood.
An offshoot
of the neighborhood association, Defending Urban Neighborhoods, has signs up in
the neighborhood reading, “Stop Hospital Sprawl.” A representative of that
group hasn’t returned a call for comment.
This article appears in May 7-13, 2014.
http://www.defendurbanneighborhoods.org/
I’m confused, Tom. Do you want to live in an urban neighborhood or not?
As per the http://www.defendurbanneighborhoods.org/ website, Highland owned the exact same property on Bellevue several years ago, and essentially used it as leverage to get an easement to build their new parking garage on South Ave. (which, BTW, did nothing to stop their employees parking on neighborhood streets). It will be interesting to see if they use the property again in the same manner, to get their way.
Then there’s the continued interest in purchasing 427 Mt. Vernon, a large brick residence on a 2 acre wooded lot directly abutting Highland Park. Add in continued problems with over-salting of sidewalks (dead trees and muddy streets because they kill all the grass every winter), and continued refusal to acknowledge the ramifications of their smoke-free policy (employees smoking near front yards of neighboring houses), and HH has a bad reputation as a corporate neighbor.
The overall problem is URMC -they paint a picture of being a good neighbor and involved in the city, but then they do stupid things like build their own exit ramp off I-390, which simply facilitates employees driving in from the suburbs. They then complain they need more parking spaces, instead of investing in bus services or other incentives to live close by. If they really gave a damn about the city, they’d ramp up parking costs and add value to city neighborhoods. Expanding HH does the opposite. It really is the epitome of corporate doublespeak.
FYI – School 12 across the street is scheduled for a big renovation starting this summer. Just watch how URMC/Highland tries to leverage that disruption into their own expansion (“what’s another few dump trucks, the place is a mess anyway, might as well get all the building out of the way at once”). Just watch.
In the interests of full disclosure, I live in the neighborhood and work at Strong.
I support the hospital expansion and live in this neighborhood!
I live in this neighborhood and completely support this hospital expansion!
I live in the neighborhood, and find Highland a far better, and more considerate neighbor than RCSD, including #12 School.
This area is so pretty and I understand some of the neighbor’s concerns. On the other hand, our city needs more hospital beds. I used to work at HH and I would never buy a house in area, because of the hospital; too much traffic, ambulances coming and going, people driving up streets & attempting to park, because they want to avoid paying for parking, in general too much commotion. And more importantly, the hospital was there long before the people were, if you don’t like it, move!
1. The cost of employee parking at URMC is already outrageous.
2. URMC has shuttle buses to and from remote parking sites. Most employees are not thrilled about adding another 1/2 an hour to their travel time on shuttles.
3. Incentives to live close by? Like, subsidize purchasing homes on Mulberry and Mt. Vernon? URMC is one of the largest employers in the County. They run 24/7/365. There are nurses, techs, CNA, and all other kinds of employees. Many of them are single parents who need to get their children to child care providers. If you want URMC to provide on-site child care at Highland or the main site—-well, that’s more space they’ll need to create.
4. I know we’re talking primarily about Highland, but URMC sucked up a large employee lot for College Town. The new free-standing Golisano Children’s Hospital also took a chunk of land.
5. You want to live where you want to live. You don’t want people telling you that if you don’t want to live near Highland Hospital then you need to move. Employees at Highland also want to live where they want to live, someof which may have to do with school districts. Making it more difficult and expensive to work, or requiring them to live in certain locations so they can walk to work or wait for a bus in the midst of a Polar Vortex is no different from suggesting you move.