Lake View Medical Center Site Could Be Hospital Again

The former Lake View Medical Center, designated to house Nancy Reagan’s drug treatment program until community opposition killed the plan, is being considered for use as a county hospital.

But the latest proposal, which was introduced Tuesday by Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, received a warm reception from community groups that had opposed plans for a drug treatment center. They said that a county hospital would be a welcome and much-needed addition to their neighborhood.

“You don’t have the same security concerns with this as with a treatment facility for drug abusers,” said Lewis Snow, vice president of the Lake View Terrace Home Owners Assn. “It doesn’t have the negative connotation.

“It would definitely improve the quality of health care for the lower-income residents of the northeast Valley,” Snow said. “If you live in Lake View Terrace, Kagel Canyon or Pacoima and you have a heart attack, you stand a much better chance of surviving if there is a medical facility there.”

The drug treatment program, proposed by Phoenix House, drew widespread criticism from residents who complained that the center would lower property values and attract more drugs and crime to their streets.

Plans for the program started to unravel in May after the former First Lady withdrew support from the center, which was to bear her name, as criticism increased. In July, Phoenix House withdrew its permit application with the city. The property remains in the control of a trustee appointed by a federal judge to oversee its sale.

The Board of Supervisors, under increasing pressure to relieve the overburdened county hospital system, asked its staff last week to investigate whether it would be more prudent to buy private hospitals that are for sale than to construct new ones.

And at Tuesday’s meeting, Antonovich introduced a motion, to be voted on next week, that instructs the county Department of Health Services to study the possibility of buying the 182-bed Lake View Medical Center, which would cost $7.5 million. A report on the findings would return to the board in 30 days.

“That’s what we’ve been fighting for for so long,” said Dwight Hubbard, co-president of the Lake View Terrace Improvement Assn. “When people bought their homes, that was one of the sales items they used, that the hospital was right there. And we’ve tried, since it closed, to have it reopened as a hospital.”

Los Angeles City Councilman Ernani Bernardi, who opposed the drug treatment program, had proposed that the city buy the property for use as a municipal senior center, library and recreation center. The proposal is still before the City Council’s General Services Committee, although city officials are recommending against it. They say it is too large and too expensive.

Bernardi, whose district includes the Lake View Terrace site, said Tuesday that he would support Antonovich’s proposal.

“A hospital would be an ideal use for that facility,” Bernardi said.

The building at 11600 Eldridge Avenue housed the Lake View Terrace Medical Center until the hospital’s 1986 bankruptcy. Most of the 15-acre site remains vacant, although part is leased to Casaloma College, which operates a training school for nurses, and part is used by the Latin American Civic Assn. to prepare meals for preschoolers in the Headstart program.