2 Cities Fight Over Hospital--Loser Gets It : Health care: Los Angeles County supervisors are expected to choose between sites in South El Monte and the City of Industry on Feb. 18. Neither community wants the $378-million facility.

City of Industry and South El Monte officials and community residents will square off during the next two weeks over whether a proposed $378-million Los Angeles County hospital will be built in one of the two cities.

But the winner will not be the one getting the proposed East Valley Medical Center. Instead, the battle is to keep the hospital out.

“We know the overcrowding (at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center); we know it (the new hospital) has to go someplace,” said South El Monte businessman Larry Beard. “But some people have been here for so long they don’t want to be uprooted, or dictated to that they’ve got to go.”

“We don’t like it. Nobody here likes it,” said Jose Mirada, a resident of the Spy Glass Hill neighborhood in the Puente Hills above the City of Industry site.

It’s the typical yes-but-not-in-my-neighborhood attitude that will probably dominate two public hearings this week and a County Board of Supervisors meeting on Feb. 18, where supervisors are expected to pick one of the two sites to begin environmental studies and preliminary architectural drawings.

The choices are between a 90-acre parcel, filled with about 60 manufacturers and small businesses in South El Monte, and a mostly-vacant, 52-acre site south of the San Gabriel River Freeway (605), which includes a heavy equipment dealership.

Already, those who live and work near the sites are gearing for battle. Last Monday, the possible location of the hospital prompted picketing near the office of Supervisor Gloria Molina by more than 100 Latino vendors from the swap meet at the Starlite Drive-in Theater, at 2540 N. Rosemead Blvd., which is within the South El Monte parcel.

“They haven’t been part of the equation,” said drive-in attorney John O’Donnell of the vendors. If the county chooses the site, it could put “1,000 vendors out of business, mostly Hispanic and low-income, the kind of people the hospital is supposedly to benefit,” he said.

Meanwhile, some residents of Spy Glass Hill, a neighborhood of $300,000 to $500,000 homes, are distributing leaflets urging their neighbors to attend the hearings.

“It’s not just Spy Glass Hill that’s opposed,” said one of the residents, real estate broker Diane Corral. “We’re coordinating a huge area . . . Whittier, the unincorporated county and some of Pico Rivera.”

Spy Glass Hill homeowners say the City of Industry site is already too congested and noisy. The area is plagued with noise from nearby railroad tracks and congestion and noise from the freeway, Rio Hondo College student traffic and funeral processions to and from nearby Rose Hills Memorial Park. A hospital would add to the problems and lower property values, they maintain.

The controversy began more than two years ago with presentation of a $2.3-billion package to revamp County-USC Medical Center near downtown Los Angeles.

That plan includes building a 350-bed hospital in the San Gabriel Valley and another in the Antelope Valley, county officials said. The San Gabriel Valley hospital would have a permanent staff of 2,800 people.

After examining 51 sites in the valley and holding eight public hearings, they finally narrowed the search to the City of Industry site and the parcel in South El Monte.

Ironically, the owner of the City of Industry site will sell, said Mike Radlovic, a real estate broker who represents owner Tom Shepherd, operator of Shepherd Machinery, a Caterpillar implement dealership located on the corner of Rose Hills Road and the 605 Freeway.

“The vast majority of the property is vacant land and sparsely developed,” Radlovic said. “It’s one of the largest pieces of open land in these areas.”

But City of Industry officials have opposed the hospital from the very beginning, Radlovic said. If the county were to buy the land, it would be removed from the tax rolls and the city would lose revenue, he said.

County officials fear that the City of Industry, with an annual budget of $55.3 million and only 631 residents, would promptly sue, County Planner Carrie Sutkin said.

“They (City of Industry representatives) have been at every single public hearing opposed to it,” she said.

City of Industry officials did not return calls by The Times.

Opponents in South El Monte voice identical concerns about traffic and revenue losses.

The site, which includes the city’s redevelopment area, is bounded on the north and south by Garvey Avenue and Rush Street, and on the east and west by Chico Avenue and Rosemead Boulevard. If the county took a third of the land away, it could ruin the city’s chances to rehabilitate the region, Assistant City Manager Steve Henley said.

Some business owners and city officials in South El Monte also worry that the City of Industry’s financial clout and legal threats may succeed in pushing the hospital onto their town of 20,850, mostly working class and 85% of whom are Latinos.

County officials say they do not fear a lawsuit from South El Monte, which has an annual budget of only $8.2 million, because they feel they can work with affected business owners. But putting the hospital in the city could pose future financial burdens for the county, or the mostly industrial property owners who sell their land. Much of the city’s underground water table is contaminated and the area is part of a federal Superfund cleanup site.

Business owners are leery of selling their property, attorney O’Donnell said, because they fear having to pay cleanup costs later, after already bearing the hardships of relocation.

All of these issues will be discussed in detail in two public meetings. The City of Industry site will be the focus of a session at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Whittier High School auditorium. The South El Monte option will be discussed at Thursday’s 5 p.m. City Council meeting during which the five-member council will decide whether to oppose or support the hospital. Two council members and the mayor have already indicated opposition.

County officials plan to use comments from both meetings to help them prepare a Feb. 18 recommendation to the supervisors.