Los Alamitos Approved Largest Building Project in City History

The largest building project to hit Los Alamitos will soon begin.

On Monday night, Los Alamitos City Council granted planning and zoning approval for a $200 million expansion project for the Los Alamitos Medical Center. Specific building plans would likely go before city for within the next two months.

Hospital officials made significant changes to the project in order to gain city approval this week after the council poked holes in the plans at last month’s city council meeting. The hospital had sought approval for a 25-year building project starting with the construction of a new $50 million medical office building and parking structure to be built over the next ten years. Residents and city leaders were irked by the decades-long timeline of the project. They also doubted whether the hospital’s parent company Tenet Healthcare would be able to fund the entire project – namely the hospital towers that would be built in the later phases.

However, the project that the council approved last night called for most of it to be completed within 10 years or else the city’s approval for the remainder of the project would be nullified. Tenet also apparently committed $200 million toward the project and guaranteed that the city would receive at least $40,000 a year in additional tax and fee revenue for the first five years after the project is built.

“This is critical for the community,” said Councilman Troy Edgar.

“We have a Fortune 500 company willing to spend $200 million in our community,” he added. “I really do see this as a world-class hospital.”

Councilwoman Marilyn Poe also praised Tenet for reducing the project’s timeline to 10-years.

“I think that in the past two weeks there have been some great strides,” she said. “To see it cut to 10 years, I am just going, ‘Hooray, Hooray.’”

Council members Warren Kusumoto and Gerri Graham-Mejia voted against the project, calling for more public scrutiny following the changes that were made to the plans in recent weeks. Holding public workshops on the project or sending it back to the planning commission for review could lead to additional improvements to the plan argued Kusumoto and Graham-Mejia.

Resident JM Ivler encouraged the city not to improve the project without adding additional measures to address the project’s traffic impact on Katella Avenue.

The project is expected to generate as many as 3,900 daily car trips down Katella Avenue. Additionally, it calls for the demolition of two existing buildings at the medical center and the construction of two hospital towers, a medical office building and a parking structure for paid parking. The 18.3-acre project would eventually add 164 more hospital beds and 849 parking spaces, while creating an estimated 1,665 jobs. According to Community Development Director Steven Mendoza, the expanded hospital would contribute roughly $350,000 a year to city coffers. The hospital also agreed to work with “preferred vendors,” who are local, added Mendoza.

“Los Alamitos Medical Center appreciates the positive action taken by the City Council to establish design standards to guide the future development of the hospital site,” said Michele Finney, the hospital’s president and chief executive officer, in a written statement following the meeting. “This first step is just the beginning of a comprehensive framework for the long-term growth and development of Los Alamitos Medical Center and we look forward to working with the city and other regulatory agencies on the design phase.”

The initial phase of the project is one element that hasn’t changed in recent weeks. It still calls for a four-story medical office building and a parking structure. Graham-Mejia said she was skeptical that the project has to start with medical office buildings rather than a hospital tower and subsequent hospital beds and emergency facilities that the public is clamoring for.

“The people of this community want the hospital beds,” she said. “They’re not so concerned with the medical offices.”

However, outpatient treatment is going to be a major component in treating aging baby boomers, said Greg Kimura, a member of the medical center’s governing board and a doctor who specializes in family practice and geriatric medicine.

Their treatment will be centered on keeping them out of the emergency room  and receiving preventative care from their doctors along with the management of chronic diseases such as diabetes, he said. The trend in medicine is going toward medical offices that offer gyms and yoga and other treatments that help to prevent chronic conditions, he said.

Longtime Los Alamitos resident Shelia Ottone, said she is happy with the changes to the project.

“I was deeply concerned, as a resident, of the 25-year plan because I am a baby boomer, and I won’t be here at the end of that 25-year plan,” she said. “It needs to happen, and it needs to happen now.”