|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
The Pleasanton Planning Commission unanimously approved an application last week for Stanford Health Care Tri-Valley to move forward with plans to expand its facility in Pleasanton and construct a new “East Wing”.
Mino Sastry, interim CEO and president of the health care facility, told the commission on May 28 that the new building will “expand the footprint of our emergency department, provide critical support services for the hospital and ensure resiliency in the event of a major earthquake or natural disaster.”
“We are proposing a modest expansion, which will provide much needed relief to our emergency department,” Sastry said. “Our proposal includes 24 additional treatment bays and three additional triage rooms, which will address the growing needs of (the) community and will enhance an integrative regional care delivery system allowing Tri-Valley residents to be seen and treated right here locally.”
Located at 5555 W. Las Positas Blvd., the Stanford Health campus in Pleasanton spans about 27.7 acres and currently houses the main hospital building, medical offices and a central utility plant.
Back in 2015, Stanford Health Care and ValleyCare merged to become what is now Stanford Health Care Tri-Valley, which continues to house Pleasanton’s sole emergency department — it is one of two emergency departments in the Tri-Valley, according to Sastry.
Because of this — and a growing population — Sastry said emergency visits have grown to the point where every year, about 2,000 emergency department visitors leave without ever being seen.
“From 2013 to 2023, we saw volumes increase by nearly 30% without a corresponding increase in space,” Sastry said.
He said because of that, the hospital sometimes has to use other areas of the hospital during emergencies due to the lack of space, which is why the facility is now looking to expand. Sastry noted that it was always in the health care facility’s plans to expand and that there are even plans for more future expansion.
The project will begin by partially demolishing the existing emergency department facade and existing canopy in order to allow for the construction of the approximately 66,000-square-foot “East Wing”.
The new building would be approximately 59 feet tall, according to city associate planner Diego Mora, and will consist of three stories.
According to Stanford Health staff, the first floor will be the expanded emergency department while the second floor will be shell space for a future 24-bed nursing unit. Sastry said the shell space, which would not be built during the first phase of the expansion, can be built out as a nursing unit to support future in-patient care in the event they need the additional beds.
“Phase 1 consists of the occupation and operation of floors one and three, with concurrent completion of the on-site improvements,” Mora stated in his staff report. “During Phase 1, the second floor (including the up to 24-bed nursing unit) will be constructed as a shell space. Phase 2 involves the build-out of the second-floor shelled space, at which point the project must provide 31 parking spaces prior to operation.”
The third floor will house labs, general processing and pharmacy, Sastry added.
In order to accommodate the expansion, the health care facility will reconfigure the existing campus loop road, relocate underground utilities and reconfigure surface parking, according to Sastry. They will also add new emergency water and wastewater storage tanks, which are “necessary for seismic resiliency”.
Sastry said the expansion will bring several benefits to the community and will significantly improve the quality of service that the hospital can provide.
One benefit from the expansion, he said, will be to the emergency department waiting space. Currently, the hospital has an outdoor waiting area that is used when the interior waiting area gets too crowded.
The expansion would also improve ambulance patient offload times, which Sastry said has been a problem for the healthcare facility in the past, below the county-required, regulated times.
All of the commissioners overwhelmingly supported the project with many of them commending the hospital for the good work it currently does, while also recognizing the need for additional space.
“While talking to friends … and family members who have used (and) gone to urgent care, they expressed the same sentiments that it’s top world class service but given the explosion in the population the facilities are overstretched so thank you for expanding,” Planning Commissioner Vivek Mohan said.
Commissioner Brandon Pace asked about concerns regarding traffic and different access points on three roads surrounding the property and how it might impact residents in the surrounding area.
Mora noted in his staff report that the city’s traffic study for the expansion showed that the additional roughly 50 new vehicle trips would not have any notable impacts at nearby intersections and with respects to proximity of residential area, the edge of the building that would be closest to any residential houses would still be over 50 feet away.
A portion of the staff report that was also brought up was the potential of adding a turn lane on Santa Rita Road so people can turn into the entrance on that same road. However, staff said the city’s traffic engineering department did not see that left turn lane as a requirement of this phase of the expansion project but that it could be considered in the future.
The project’s targeted completion date is set to be around the middle of 2028. The health care facility plans on constructing a temporary ambulance parking location with a canopy in order to “support hospital operations during construction”.
