Cedars-Sinai’s 15-Year Expansion Plan Criticized : Hearing: Neighbors cite fears that the acclaimed hospital’s proposal, which would boost its square footage by 50%, would make traffic even worse.

In the first public hearing on a project described as being critical to its future, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center encountered sharp criticism this week over its plans to add 700,000 square feet of medical facilities over 15 years.

Despite high praise for the world-renowned medical center, officials from Los Angeles, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood joined several homeowner groups in urging that the proposed master plan expansion of the West Los Angeles facility be blocked pending a new environmental study of its consequences. Otherwise, they argued, an already crowded neighborhood could be overwhelmed by new traffic congestion, inadequate parking and other urban problems.

“The city of Beverly Hills realizes the value and importance of the proposed Cedars-Sinai expansion to the community and the region,” associate planner Daniel Gleiberman said at a hearing Monday on the project’s draft environmental report. “However, it is also important that the quality of life for the project’s neighbors not be allowed to deteriorate.”

Gleiberman’s comments underscored a recurring theme during the 2 1/2-hour hearing in Los Angeles: that Cedars-Sinai’s proposal should be judged on its potential problems, not the medical center’s reputation for international research and community service.

Indeed, as Cedars-Sinai’s officials noted, no one at the hearing voiced outright opposition to any expansion of the facility at Beverly and San Vicente boulevards. Even opponents asked that the project be redrawn or reduced to assure a minimum of environmental consequences.

At issue is Cedars-Sinai’s master plan to increase the existing 1.2-million-square-foot medical facility by almost 50%. No price tag has been set, though Cedars-Sinai officials say that plans for four medical buildings--and 3,200 new parking spaces--will cost the nonprofit medical center hundreds of million of dollars.

Although the proposed facilities include an organ transplant facility, officials drew special attention to a planned 340,000-square-foot outpatient diagnostic and treatment center that they said is critical to the medical center’s ability to stay competitive in today’s health care industry--one driven by new technologies and cost considerations.

“Without the outpatient diagnostic center, the future of Cedars is truly at risk,” said George Mihlsten, a prominent land-use attorney representing Cedars-Sinai in its bid for city approval of the expansion.

During the meeting conducted by city hearing examiner Michael Davies, Cedars-Sinai officials argued that the expansion would benefit the medical center and the surrounding community. Studies, they said, show that 78% of 75,000 patients Cedars-Sinai treats every year live within a 10-mile radius of the medical center.

“Cedars-Sinai is a health care resource and it’s important to look at this as a resource, not just another development,” said Paul Yaeger, vice president for planning.

“We are not building for building’s sake,” he added. “We’re building to accommodate the health care needs we think this community will require.”

The medical center’s project also drew support from many quarters, including the American Lung Assn., Los Angeles Free Clinic, Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles, West Hollywood Community Alliance of 170 businesses and the Little People of America, whose representative praised Cedars-Sinai’s clinic for people of short stature.

Still, the project encountered a significant number of critics, among them homeowner groups and other cities concerned that the expansion will bring unbearable congestion to local streets.

Citing the perennial West Los Angeles concerns over traffic, Virginia Kruger, Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky’s planning deputy, said the project’s environmental report needs more detail.

Similarly, West Hollywood Community Development Director Gay Forbes voiced concerns about the project’s implications for traffic. The environmental report says about 28,120 daily car trips would be generated by the expansion.

Although Cedars-Sinai’s traffic consultants say the increased traffic can be offset by street improvements, ride-sharing and better coordination of traffic signals, the project’s critics had doubts about that claim and others.

Beverly Hills’ Gleiberman, for example, noted that the project’s draft environmental impact report estimates that the expansion will generate 200,000 gallons of sewage a day but does not identify how the sewage will be taken to the Hyperion Treatment Plant in Playa del Rey.

And Harald Hahn, president of the Burton Way Homeowners Assn., said his group had a range of concerns about the project, troubled by everything from its inadequate plans for new parking to its inevitable effect on air quality.

“If nothing is done to reduce automobile traffic, the (draft report) assures us that upon completion of the project the air quality around Cedars will be at such unhealthful levels that we residents will very soon qualify to be patients of Cedars,” Hahn said.

Although Cedars-Sinai officials say the project is critical to its future, critics, including the Robertson-Beverly Community Assn., which represents 250 neighboring merchants and homeowners, raised concern about their own future.

“In an area that has already been built to over-capacity, where there are chronic traffic problems at almost every intersection, where there are severe shortages of parking, it is neither reasonable nor responsible to approve” Cedars-Sinai’s environmental report, said the association’s Leonard Cohen.

Public comment on the project will be accepted for at least one more week with a Planning Commission meeting tentatively scheduled for March 18.

Expansion Plans Cedars-Sinai Medical Center plans to add 700,000 square feet of medical facilities in the next 15 years, but the proposal is causing concern over increased traffic and other issues.