Industry Will Keep Fighting Hospital Site : Project: County supervisors have voted to proceed with an environmental impact report, but the city cites traffic gridlock and hazardous chemicals near the location.

City of Industry officials will continue fighting Los Angeles County over its selection of a 35-acre, city-owned parcel as the site for the proposed East Valley Medical Center.

The location--west of Hacienda Boulevard at Don Julian Road near Valley Boulevard--was a last-minute entry in a two-year search by county staff members, who looked at 51 other sites in the region for the proposed 340-bed hospital.

On Tuesday, county supervisors voted 4-1, with Supervisor Deane Dana opposed, to proceed with an environmental impact report on the new Industry site.

“We’ll oppose it at all appropriate places--at the board level, in court, in the condemnation proceedings,” said Industry City Atty. Graham A. Ritchie after the vote.

The site is surrounded by gridlocked streets and industrial firms with hazardous chemicals, Ritchie said.

“We think it’s a foolish place to put a hospital,” he said.

But William Weitekamp, county project manager for the hospital, said traffic problems can be solved by widening streets. He minimized environmental hazards by pointing out that El Encanto Convalescent Hospital and a vocational school exist near the industrial businesses.

“We think it has a number of fine qualities,” Weitekamp said of the parcel.

It has good access from the Pomona Freeway and from surface streets, the land is vacant and it is in the middle of the population areas that would be served by the medical staff, he said. The site was originally overlooked because it is landscaped and looks like a park, Weitekamp said.

City of Industry officials sought to put a hospital there in the 1970s but eventually rejected the idea because of increased traffic, Ritchie said. The land is at present being held for possible commercial or industrial development, he said.

The city will lose revenue if a hospital is placed on the land, because county facilities are exempt from property taxes, city officials have said.

The $378-million East Valley Medical Center is part of an overall $2.3-billion package to put two county hospitals in outlying areas, including the Antelope Valley, and to revamp and reduce the size of the County-USC Medical Center near downtown Los Angeles.

The selection of a site in Industry means that the county can begin to meet a 1994 deadline to qualify for state money to help pay off the construction loan, Weitekamp said.

But a snafu could develop later this year if the county refuses to condemn the City of Industry land for the hospital. Four votes are needed for condemnation, and Supervisor Mike Antonovich made it clear Tuesday that he will not vote to condemn land for the hospital. Dana voiced no opinion Tuesday but has made statements opposing condemnation in the past.

Meanwhile, those opposed to two other San Gabriel Valley locations previously considered by the county say they will not let down their guard, despite the new site.

Both locations--90 acres of industrial land in South El Monte dubbed Site 49 and Site 37, 52 acres in Industry at the 605 Freeway and Rose Hills Road--remain alternatives to be included in the environmental impact report.

“It bothers us that the board would not eliminate Site 37 outright,” said Michael Branconier, chairman of a citizens group that opposes using the site, which is near the Spy Glass Hill residential development.

If anything goes wrong with the new Industry site, Branconier said his group fears that the county could reconsider Site 37. On Tuesday, the supervisors refused to eliminate sites 37 and 49 from consideration.

After Tuesday’s vote, South El Monte Mayor Jim Kelly said he would welcome reconsideration of a site in his city. The City Council wanted the county to put the hospital on Site 46, a 31-acre vacant parcel within the Whittier Narrows Flood Control Basin.

Despite city assurances that the hospital could be elevated above the flood plain, county officials eliminated it last year because of the risk of flooding.

The county then shifted its focus to a 90-acre parcel on Rosemead Boulevard, to which the South El Monte City Council objected. That site comprises the city’s redevelopment area, and its use for a hospital would gut the city revitalization plan, officials said.

Kelly said he believes that the county’s new choice is just a temporary one. He hopes that Whittier Narrows will be reconsidered once the new parcel hits legal opposition.

“I think the City of Industry has more money per capita than the county per capita to pay for attorneys” and legal action, Kelly said. “I think everything is going to come back to South El Monte.”

Equally optimistic is Bill Shepherd, owner of Site 37 in Industry .

“We’re still the only site that doesn’t require condemnation,” said Michael Radlovic, a spokesman for Shepherd. “They’ve picked a site that requires condemnation and they don’t know if they have the votes to do it.”