Hospital Meeting Postponed, Once Again

The Children's Hospital SAC meeting that was supposed to take place on July 13th has once again been postponed.

The meeting reportedly ran into several difficulties and a motion was made to stop the meeting immediately. First, the City's Department of Neighborhoods did not send out the presentation slide deck until the morning of the meeting, giving SAC members very little time to review the slides to be prepared for the meeting. The general timeframe is supposed to be at least one week.

Second, the 2020 MIMP Annual Report had reportedly many inconsistencies and potential inaccuracies and several SAC members reportedly requested that they be corrected for the next meeting.

One example is the issue that the Hospital withdrew its July 2020 Master Use Permit application and was to start and submit a new permit as the SAC was reportedly told that it would. However the MIMP report states (page 3):  “Seattle Children's submitted a Master Use Permit application for SDCI review on July 7, 2020" which is reportedly not accurate and appears as if it needs to be removed from the report, as at this time there is no pending application.

There also seems to be inconsistencies with the document that was sent to the SAC and the one on-line. 

Additionally, as reported in previous Blog posts, the Hospital has not met Condition 15, as pointed out by a neighbor which states:  “Children’s shall create and maintain a Standing Advisory Committee (SAC) to review and comment on all proposed and potential projects prior to submission of their respective Master Use Permit applications.” 

However, reportedly, the SAC has only started discussions regarding Project Copper, but has not reviewed or commented on the project

There were also technical difficulties during the meeting, in which SAC members were not able to log into Webex and called in and were unable to be clearly heard. 

The City is working with the SAC members and the Hospital in rescheduling the meeting, once again. A SAC member asked that the meeting be rescheduled in September as it was not an urgent meeting and the potential to interrupt summer plans was not optimal. 

The two new proposed tall buildings will be viewable by those living in that area, according to images prepared by the Hospital's contracted design firm. The buildings will also be situated close to the perimeter of the Hospital and residential boundaries. As neighbors have expressed in over 100 pages of comments submitted to the City, there will be significant  and permanent impacts affecting the livability of the neighborhood.

The SAC meeting scheduled for December 2020 also was cancelled due to several reasons reportedly. One of them was that Children’s is not complying with one of the legal requirements of Council Condition 15 of the Seattle City Council, which states that the SAC must review and comment on Children’s potential project before Children’s submits its MUP application to the City. SAC members' role is to advise the City and Children’s Hospital on the development that is occurring under the provisions of the Children’s Hospital Major Institution Master Plan.

The sequence should be that the major institution formulates ideas and then presents those plans including the designs to the SAC, who review and make changes and then they sent that plan to Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections (SDCI ) who reviews it and sends it back again to the SAC for refinements.

Instead it was reported that in July, Children's Hospital went directly to SDCI and submitted their  permit that was quite different than what was approved in the Major Institution Master Plan.. Then Hospital then scheduled a meeting in August. However during this time, it was reported the project was in the hands of SDCI who started to work on it. 

Then the Hospital put the big boards up around the perimeter of the Hospital stating the comment deadline. But neighbors reported that the documents regarding the proposed development were not accessible on-line so they could not review them in order to submit comments. 

And the SAC was given the documents for the first time at their meeting and thus were not able to properly review and analyze them prior to the meeting to formulate opinions and input in preparation for their meeting. It was reported that some SAC members even brought this concern up at the meeting that as well as that the process was out of order but Colin Vasquez, the City representative did not comment. 

Many neighbors also submitted comments on the Hospital's non-compliance stating that the Hospital is not following the approved standard process and that that the Hospital was trying to get approval from the City when they were supposed to first have the SAC's input whose role it is to review the development plans and makes changes. Thus the Hospital appeared to be moving through the process in the incorrect order.

Several SAC members expressed concern after reviewing a letter from neighbor David Yuan to the Director of the Department of Constructionand Inspection, Nathan Torgelson. The letter stated in part that the process appeared to be faulty because the SAC had not been given the opportunity to review and comment on Children’s potential project before Children’s submitted its Major Institution Master Plan. (MUP) application to the City. This is the legal requirement of Condition 15 of the Seattle City Council decision that has not been followed.

Some SAC members also expressed concern that at the meeting the City said that the SAC does not carry very much weight in the review and decision making process. Members expressed concern that their role needed to be clarified and adhered to.

It is also reported that the Hospital's proposed development different is very different that what was approved in 2010 in the MIMP, in which the Seattle City Council approved the 20-year growth Master Plan for Children’s Hospital. 

The process to come to the approval was quite lengthy - 2 years of Citizen Advisory Committee Meetings as well as multiple meetings between the hospital and the Laurelhurst Community Club both working to come to a compromise on the proposed expansion.  The City Council adopted the two parties Settlement Agreement submitted in February 2010.  Some of the provisions in the agreement set forth are: reduced square footage, no expansion of Hospital boundaries across Sand Point Way, 50 year restriction on expansion into residential areas,  height restrictions of no more than 20 percent of the campus land area over 90 feet and no more than 10 percent over 125 feet and no structure above 140 feet in height. The full Settlement Agreement is here.