NEWPORT BEACH : Hearings End on Hospital Master Plan

In the final night of public hearings on the Hoag Hospital master plan, hospital officials delivered a hard-hitting rebuttal to concerns that have been raised, and a number of residents testified in support of the proposal.

Planning commissioners said they hope to make a decision at their Feb. 20 meeting, but do not plan to take further testimony at that time.

Hoag’s President Michael D. Stephens argued that the hospital expansion will keep its services on the cutting edge of health care. He lambasted residents’ comments about the safety of the construction location and the importance of the wetlands there, as well as their suggestion that the new buildings be constructed on another site, calling them ill-conceived and based on “conjecture” and “personal opinion.”

“Quite frankly, I take exception,” Stephens said about residents’ charges that methane and hydrogen sulfide gas leaks make the lower site unsafe for building.

“I would urge you to place greater credence on the EIR (environmental impact report) than the perspective of those individuals who have ventured into the (realm) of experts,” Stephens told the commission.

While the wetlands would be destroyed by the construction and would be re-created elsewhere, Stephens disputed the value of the existing wetlands. The residents have portrayed the wetlands as being in better condition than they are, he said.

He said that the alternative proposals put forth by residents are unworkable. They have called for building near the existing tower, on the upper campus, instead of on the open space on West Coast Highway.

“I think it’s a balance of choice--costs and benefits,” he said. The trade-off “cannot even approach the importance of the hospital’s expansion.”

Further, F. W. Dubby Evans III, a vice president at the hospital, gave a detailed presentation to the commission showing how each of the residents’ concerns has been addressed by the environmental review, which the city paid an outside agency to prepare.

He was especially critical of the residents’ proposal to shift new buildings from the lower to the upper campus.

“It would hamstring the hospital from being able to pursue what it really needs to pursue--which is incremental development based on need,” Evans said.

A number of residents also spoke in favor of the hospital’s plan, most of whom told anecdotal tales about how Hoag has helped them.

Many also brought up issues of property rights and the importance of treating the hospital as a public service rather than a business entity.

“I remember when I grew up, private property was private property, and if you went tromping through there you got in trouble,” said Jim Dale, co-chairman of Hoag 2010, a hospital support group, referring to those who say they often visit the hospital-owned wetlands.

“Hoag has been a team player in this community. And to those who say, ‘How can you fall in love with a hospital?’ I say, you fall in love with a place where three of your children were born . . . where they take care of your father with loving and tender care . . . where they take care of your grandmother, who’s 90 years old (and) been in there three times,” Dale said.