Hoag Hospital’s 20-Acre Development Plans Get Coastal Commission’s OK

Hoag Hospital’s controversial plans to develop 20 acres around the hospital, including a small wetlands, was unanimously approved Tuesday by the California Coastal Commission.

The plans map out the hospital’s growth over the next 20 years into a regional medical center with outpatient facilities.

Although the Coastal Commission’s own staff recommended against the expansion, commissioners voted, 11 to 0, to approve zoning changes to allow construction.

“We don’t expect any (more) hurdles,” said Peter Foulke, senior vice president at Hoag Hospital.

Though the plan does not lay out specific building designs, functions and locations, it does provide for maximum square footages and building heights for the future.

The Coastal Commission is involved in this planning process because the site to be developed lies within the coastal zone. Known as the lower campus, it already contains a cancer center, a child care center, a parking lot and stacks that burn methane gases collected from underground. The land also has a 40-foot bluff and a 2.5-acre wetlands dominated by cattails.

The Hoag plan before the Coastal Commission proposes to develop 19.6 acres of the 20.4-acre lower campus, leaving the remaining land for a public park. Also, because wetlands would be lost, the hospital has agreed to enhance similar wetlands near UC Irvine, Foulke said.

Foulke said that the daylong commission meeting adjourned without “totally resolving” the question of how much wetlands the hospital must create elsewhere to mitigate the loss of the 2.5 acres.

Hospital officials plan to build facilities that will provide outpatient care such as same-day surgeries, which do not require an overnight hospital stay, Broussard said.

This is a sweet victory for hospital officials who last month were stunned when Coastal Commission staff recommended denial of the Hoag plan primarily because of the loss of wetlands without sufficient mitigation. At that point, hospital officials asked that the hearing be delayed until Tuesday.

In that month delay, Foulke said that hospital officials did not change the plan and hoped that commissioners would approve the plans despite staff objections. On Tuesday, 40 people, including hospital staff and local businessmen and residents, traveled to San Diego in a bus to speak on behalf of the plan.

The plan, which has been the subject of public debates, was introduced by the hospital in 1989 and approved by the city of Newport Beach in 1992. It also has attracted a devoted opposition from residents who live on the bluff near the hospital.

Bill Jennings, a resident who shares the bluff overlooking the ocean with the hospital, has been fighting the expansion plans since they were originally proposed.

“My particular interest in the whole thing was building heights and view,” said Jennings, who also attended the hearing and testified before the commission. “It is a nice view up here . . . (but after expansion) you won’t be able to see the water line, you’ll only be able to see the horizon.”

He and other residents are opposed to cutting into the bluff to accommodate new buildings and, consequently, more traffic.

“We are not opposed to Hoag per se,” he said. “But we are just the guys next door and the most vulnerable.”

Once Hoag Hospital designs specific building plans and dimensions, it must return to City Hall to seek the proper permits.