Irvine’s ‘15-Year Journey’ for Hospital Takes the Form of a 3-Level Mall

When it opens in 1988, the City of Irvine’s first hospital will feature an airy, three-level medical mall as part of the $80-million, 177-bed complex, backers of the project said Wednesday.

Irvine Mayor David Baker, who also serves as chairman of the board of the Irvine Medical Center, said that plans for the hospital, which is now part of the privately owned, Beverly Hills-based American Medical International chain, represent the culmination of “a 15-year journey” for the city.

Baker said that the new facility was “not just another community hospital” and voiced the hope that Irvine Medical Center would be “a model of community health care in the year 2000.”

Preliminary sketches of the complex show an in-patient tower at one end of the mall and, at the other, a 90,000-square-foot medical office plaza to be built and operated by the Irvine Co.

According to Dr. Marvin Goldberg, the medical chain’s senior vice president, ground breaking for the facility at the corner of Alton Parkway and Sand Canyon Road--a 15-acre site donated by the Irvine Co.--will take place in July.

“Most of the time, coming to the hospital is a major, frightening event,” said Goldberg, a pediatrician. The mall design, which features a skylight along its length and open balconies inside, should reduce that anxiety, he said.

Among the services to be offered in the complex, he said, would be a community conference center, an executive fitness center, and a women’s and children’s pavilion.

Support for the project, Baker said, comes from “a team that is diverse in its resources,” including UC Irvine, Saddleback Community College District and the Industrial League of Orange County. Both the Irvine Co., Orange County’s largest landowner, and the Fluor Corp., one of the county’s largest employers, are represented on the Irvine Medical Center’s 21-member governing board.

Baker said the board would be independent and self-perpetuating, with American Medical International holding only three seats.

The two largest groups represented on the board, with six seats each, are a community group, People of Irvine for a Community Hospital (PICH), and UCI, which were frequently on opposite sides of the lengthy and contentious community dispute which came to be known as “the Irvine hospital wars.”

For years, the dean of UCI’s College of Medicine, Dr. Stanley van den Noort, led the fight against PICH, private doctors’ groups and others in the Irvine community over location and control of the hospital. Involvement with PICH helped revive Baker’s political career after his defeat in a City Council race.

In 1983, UCI dropped plans for an on-campus medical center, and van den Noort was not reappointed to his administrative position. The acting dean, Dr. Gerald D. Weinstein, will serve as a member of the IMC board, Goldberg said, and the UCI medical school will be affiliated with the new medical center.

Initially, Baker said, PICH wanted to develop a “not-for-profit, independent hospital.” Before long, he said, “we got a real education” in the difficulties of starting a hospital. As a result of the affiliation with AMI, he said, “the vision we had is taking form.”

As part of its agreement with Irvine Medical Center, Goldberg said, AMI has pledged $1 million annually for indigent care, and has established a $15-million Irvine Medical Foundation under the medical center board’s control.

Irvine Medical Center, Goldberg said, will be “open to all comers, those who can pay and those who can’t pay.”

The Irvine Co. has been “a very important player” in developing plans for the hospital, Baker said. He said the medical center would serve as the “cornerstone” of the company’s 400-acre biomedical complex, which surrounds the hospital site.

A slide show that was part of the press conference reinforced this theme, identifying the medical center as “part of the Irvine Co.’s biomedical park.”

Goldberg said that “Irvine is the hub of one of the most exciting areas of development” in the country and that he was not concerned about the overall contraction of the medical market. Among the 21 hospitals that AMI operates are three others in Orange County, Garden Grove Hospital, Beach Community and Anaheim General.