Judge stops expansion of San Fernando Valley hospital
Providence Holy Cross Medical Center must stop construction work until the L.A. City Council decides whether more environmental review is needed.
A judge today ordered a hospital in the San Fernando Valley to halt construction of its $180 million expansion until the Los Angeles City Council reconsiders the project and decides whether more environmental review is needed.
Superior Court Judge Thomas I. McKnew Jr. said Providence Holy Cross Medical Center -- a hospital that treated 17 passengers in the Sept. 12 Metrolink crash -- must stop work until the council either approves the project using an eight-vote majority or orders an environmental impact report on the project.
Attorney Ted Franklin, who represents groups challenging the hospital expansion, urged the council to demand the extra environmental review, a process that typically takes at least a year. The judge dropped several hints that the hospital expansion needs more analysis but did not rule on it directly.
"I think [council members] should take him seriously," said Franklin, who represents Community Advocates for Responsible Expansion, a group made up of unionized health care workers and neighborhood activists, among others. "A judge ordinarily doesn't speak to those issues unless there's something he wanted them to hear."
Providence Holy Cross Medical Center started work four months ago on its new hospital tower, which will provide 101 beds in the short term and as many as 35 more in coming years. At least half of those beds will be devoted to emergency room patients, according to hospital officials.
Last November, the council fell two votes shy of the 10 votes that, under city law, would have forced the hospital to prepare an environmental impact report. Critics of the project argued in court that only eight votes were needed to do so.
The project is being challenged by neighbors who live near the Mission Hills hospital and by Service Employees International Union, which is in a labor dispute with the entity that operates Providence Holy Cross.
A spokesman for City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo said it is too soon to say when the council will take up the hospital expansion. A lawyer for the hospital said officials had not decided its next move.
Asked for the cost of stopping work, Providence Holy Cross attorney Tim McOsker said, "Big."
"It's not about the cost in dollars," he added. "It's about the cost in human lives if we delay."
Health care officials have voiced dismay about the challenge to Providence Holy Cross, which is expanding medical facilities in a county in which 11 emergency rooms have closed since 2002. The hospital conducted blood drives and received a visit from Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in the wake of the Metrolink crash.
david.zahniser@latimes.com
