The assignment consisted in reinventing the building of the upset and dilapidated general hospital which exceeds the side of Eastside as a centerpiece of a new dynamic health focused on health.
Eighteen months after obtaining an exclusive negotiation agreement, the team selected for work has completed a conceptual plan and should take the first concrete stages of a redevelopment program that could take a decade.
With an authorization of $ 120 million for sanitation, Centennial Partners began design work on upgrades to prepare the 93 -year -old building for its new center life for mixed use with medical offices, commercial spaces and up to 824 residential units.
In its conceptual plan, Centennial Partners has described a global vision of its proposal to redo the 19-storey hospital and its adjacent campus of 41.9 acres in a mixed district of affordable housing, labor and market rates, retail stores, health services, open space and public transport connections.
Calling the project “A national model for fair urban development”, he proposed a progressive development with wide latitude on scale, providing scenarios ranging from less than 1,480 residential units with mixed income to 4,954, and from 2.1 to 4.6 million square feet of commercial space.
The preliminary plan, published in February, is the basis of a detailed master plan and a Centennial Partners environmental report should finish by spring.
An article in front of supervisors on Tuesday would reserve $ 3.3 million to finance this detailed plan. The motion, of the supervisor Hilda Solis, who defended the project, would also authorize the county staff to seek the inclusion of the emblematic building – for a long time in the scene of the 62 -year -old soap opera of the same name – on the national register of historic places. Although responsible for historical and cultural meaning, the hospital has never been appointed.
The designation would guarantee the preservation of its historical character and add another funding, in the form of tax credits, to a plan which would merge private investments with public subsidies and low -income housing and climate tax credits.
In June, the supervisors authorized a free lease from the property of the hospital to the development team to undertake the two -year correction which would include a seismic upgrade of the hospital building, the demolition of 18 structures spread over the campus, the downgrading and replacement of obsolete public services and the tests to identify the risks of soil and materials that would require a reduction. The existing tenants of the building, including a community well-being center, should be moved.
The funds, largely coming from state housing subsidies and the Federal American Rescue Plan, would provide $ 106 million to the centenary partners, a joint venture led by Primestor Venture Partners, the company belonging to Latino which built the retail center in the redevelopment of the city of the Jordan Downs Project in South Angeles. Of the rest, $ 9 million would be detained in the eventual and $ 5 million reserved for county management.
The county is said to be responsible for the move of tenants who currently occupy the four lower floors of the hospital building, including the non-profit well-being center which offers free health programs to the surrounding community and the Community Mental Health Center violence.
The preliminary report attracts an image that gives reflection on the challenges the project is faced. Among them, there is the seismic risk, the contamination of dangerous materials, the deterioration of infrastructure, aging and ineffective buildings, parking deficiencies, disconnected streets, fragmented green spaces and Americans with disabilities. He calls for the commitment of environmental experts, access planners, historic preservation consultants and arborists to develop solutions at the start of planning.
The fundamental problem is a division of the property by a drop of 40 feet between the hospital building and its vast forecourt and the rest of the campus to the west.
The plan provides that the forecourt of becoming “the programmatic heart of the campus” which “serves the entry into the renovated hospital and operates as a community porch, inviting engagement and interaction”.
A traffic plan with new entries on the campus of the surrounding streets on all sides “would allow more graceful approaches to the forecourt and the heart of the campus. A new parking structure would benefit from the note, hiding the parking lot under the forecourt and extending the uses of the community on its roof.
In addition, “a network of development, circulation and coordinated green space” would help fill the 40 -foot note.
The plan divides campus into seven zones for progressive development. The first would be the building of the hospital itself. Its ground floor would become an “interior street” while the upper floors would be reactive as housing in pieces from 100 to 250 units to take advantage of public funding sources.
The rest of the campus would follow with a mixture of open spaces, new offices and retail shops and residential buildings that could vary from 49 to 991 units.
The initial repair work on the unoccupied floors of the hospital building should start in December. Major work will follow in the spring after completing the master plan and the environmental impact report project.
Thanks to its dominant presence on the Eastside and at the service of low -income residents, the hospital has an emotional link to many of those who have since achieved their importance.
Funded by a 1923 bond issue, the most important building in the city was completed in 1932 and opened the following year with a high mission listed in the stone at its entry: “To provide care for patients and suffering, to which health doctors or a life in the presence of these services and service.
Over the years, the General Hospital has continued to shake the destitute of the city.
From the 1960s, the installation endeavored to follow the pace of the requirements of new medical technologies. Missing air conditioning and fire tasters, it was no longer in accordance with the tightening of air quality and fire quality standards.
The supervisors voted in 1990 to start building a replacement.
On January 17, 1994, the Northridge earthquake forced the permanent closure of a psychiatric unit of 166 beds and led to new state seismic standards for hospitals which would require structural improvements in the massive building.
The new County-US County Medical Center finally completed, the General Hospital closed on November 7, 2008.
To a limited extent, there has been a community asset with its Art Deco vestibule always open to the public. The Wellness Center occupies a large part of its vast first floor, and several research teams and training programs use space to the fourth floor. But the rest of its 19 floors was abandoned and fell into a state of hanging ceiling tiles, broken bulbs, peeler, rusty piping and dust gathering.
