Extra Fizz: Laurelhurst and Children’s Reach Settlement

This is awesome. However, I expect that Children's, faced with this, may consider expanding in other parts of Puget Sound, more's the pity for Seattle. This is substantially less than Children's had said that they needed for the next several decades. The hospital is already having to divert patients. Expect their Bellevue location to be a larger expansion over time.

Perhaps it will be good for an expansion of Children's beyond one campus. While I've never really understood why it is where it is, maybe in the future, for future needs, they can open a smaller “branch” hospital (similar to Pacific Campus vs. Colby Campus for Providence Everett) in SE Seattle, providing easier access to South Seattle, Renton, Mercer Island and South King County residents. Move some specialties completely to that hospital (that are typically unrelated to specialties at the main campus), and no more expanding into Lauralhurst.

Granted, something like this comes with a host of additional issues, additional staff needed, etc, but as our region grows, it may behoove us to have more than Children's and Mary Bridge as they are.

I'm annoyed that Children's gave in at all to those NIMBY idiots. This is going to cost them money, money that could be used for things that actually increase care for sick children. If I lived in Laurelhust I would be embarrassed.

I'm awfully glad that the board of Children's finally had to change its pennywise but pound-foolish strategy and agree to compromise. Now they can get to work expanding on behalf of the children they're charged with serving, albeit much later than they could have if they hadn't been such poor role models for major-facility permitted expansion, personalizing the issues beyond recognition in an attempt to skirt the code.

Michael M:

Children's is where it is because back when it opened (1940s, I think), it was thought that it was healthier for patients -especially children who were and still are often hospitalized for respiratory ailments- to recover “in the country.” And in those days, Laurelhurst was pretty much “the country,” but still in proximity to all the doctors trained by UW.

Expansion has been incremental and there was never a time when it made sense to simply abandon the campus and move somewhere else.
However, Children's has, as much as possible financially, expanded into South Lake Union, the U-District and Bellevue. But it still makes sense to centralize most in-patient, surgical and sub-specialty care on the central campus.

What's so annoying and petty about LCC and the snobby rich assholes who live in Laurelhurst is that there is not likely a single person living there anymore who did not have full notice when they bought their home that were moving near a major regional health care facility. So any Laurelhurst resident who has ever opposed the operations and expansion of Childrens really needs to go fuck themselves.

If you think it's Seattle Children's that hasn't been willing to compromise, you haven't been paying attention. Take a look at how the expansion proposals have changed over the years:

http://masterplan.seattlechildrens.org/cac_past…

While certain capacity is better centralized, Children's is trying to position itself to be teh only hospital that treats sick children in all of the northwest. To me, it is not efficient to suck what can and should be done in Portland or Spokane, yes even south sound or eastside, to one place.

Also, if you believe that everyone in Laurelhurst is wealthy, then you must have only moved to Seattle in the last few years or so, and don't know the people who live in the apartment buildings in that area, nor those who bought a home 20 or 30 years ago.

If you think Seattle Children's changes responded adequately, the Hearing Examiner begs to differ, the strength of which is what brought about today's settlement:

http://masterplan.seattlechildrens.org/document…

It occurred to me that Children's Hospital recent name change to Seattle Children's was in part a political ploy to try and leverage the public on their side when they threatened to move out of Seattle if their expansion wasn't approved. By calling themselves 'Seattle Children's' it gave greater emotional leverage to the threat of moving the hospital out of Seattle.

That said, Laurelhurst didn't have much of a leg to stand on here, given such a small portion of that community would be impacted during construction and by expansion. At least this is settled.

Also, what's with Children's having to concede putting the parking garage underground? Shouldn't that have been underground in the first place? Waste of space… whoever did the original design and planned an above-ground garage flat out wasn't thinking. It makes me wonder how many other engineering inefficiencies are in the plan.

So it also looks like Children's is paying these NIMBY losers back for their legal fees. That is down right ridiculous.

There are few people in the Seattle political scene I completely hate, but the LCC is one of them. It is infuriating that they are getting anything.

Obviously there was continued controvery on several points, but clearly the hospital planners were changing their proposals to compromise. The Hearing Examiner's opinion was based on the city's urban village strategy. I see her point, but it's just across the border of the U-District Urban Center so it seemed a little forced to me. I'd prefer the hospital just be annexed into the U-District since traffic and jobs wise it has far more in common with University Village or UWMC than Laurelhurst.

Giffy–your ignorant ranting at NIMBYs makes you sound like an angry moron yourself. There's good arguments on all sides, but you make none of them.

All public interest advocacy starts with “NIMBY”–the world is our back yard. Start paying attention to the connections. If you can't do that, go suck an egg.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for hospitals geared towards children, and expansion when necessary. But, while these homeowners may have known what was what when they moved in, Children's has known what was what for a very long time.

And I specifically mention SE Seattle because of its relative lack of hospital services.

The comparison I made – Providence – operates two hospitals in Everett, one in North Everett, one just west of Downtown. The North Everett is the trauma center, cardiology, neurology, oncology, etc. It's the bit cheese. The other campus (Pacific Campus) has the OB/GYN, birthing, inpatient PT/OT/ST, lower risk general surgery, and an ER.

They work together well, and allow for greater access and easier access to care, while also not having major encroaching on the respective neighborhoods they are in (which isn't to say it never happens, but if it weren't for having two campuses, it would be considerably worse).

So, the only thing that I'm trying to say is that maybe it will be good if growth is constrained, and that Children's will look at potentially implementing a similar model of across town campuses that serve different purposes.

Griffy is dead on here. Most of Seattle and the political community agrees with him.

Neighborhood activism is important. In the case of LCC, it really isn't neighborhood activism. Instead it is a small group of mentally ill people with too much free time and money who want to inflict their world view on the rest of us.

I am sorry that Children's had to concede on this. They have shown great class and have taken the higher ground.

“Most of Seattle and the political community” hate LCC? Do you know that one of LCC's co-appellants is Seattle Displacement Coalition, and they both fought hard to protect low income housing? That interest appears to underlie much of the deal.

“a small group of mentally ill people”? I don't always agree with LCC (or SDC). In fact, I often think their strategy is wrongheaded. However, that does not mean they are deserving of such obnoxious attacks.

“Most of Seattle and the political community agrees” with your and Griffy’s angry and illogical crap? There’s plenty of room for anger in neighborhood (and all other) politics. Righteous anger often drives appropriate change. Stupid and illogical anger just turns people off.

With all due respect to those who support Childrens proposed expansion and call us Laurelhurst residents “Nimby idiots”, I would suggest they consider the idea of having the equivilant of a building the size of 1.5 Columbia Towers put three or four blocks from their home before the fire away. Some expansion was expected and supported in our area, but they were talking about tripling the size of this place. All we wanted was reasonable restrictions on skyscrapers being built in our neighborhood with the resulting traffic and environmental impacts. I am frankly a little disappointed that they are only cutting back to 1.225 MILLION square feet.

It is pretty challenging getting in and out of our area to begin with. Can't wait to see what happens when the get started on the 520 expansion

I think Seattle Children's is a sacred cow that needs to be slaughtered. My son was recently there for six weeks and received horrendous care. They are so big and out of control, there was no accountability whatsoever. When I visited him he had bedsores and was covered in his own excrement, for God's sake, and that was the least of it. Of course when I confronted the powers that be they denied everything and did nothing whatsoever for us.

They have a MacDonald's or Starbuck's attitude of taking over the world, quality be damned. That's why their CEO insists on the patients being called “clients” instead. It's called monopoly and they're winning. Those sad eyes kids in their media blitz would be better off elsewhere, believe me.