By Tes Welborn, HANC Board
Community members have been fighting UCSF's unilateral decision to break the Space Ceiling limits agreement of a maximum of 3.55 million square feet, established in 1976 and written into state law. The coalition, of which Calvin Welch and I are members, supports retaining the Space Ceiling and the 2014 Long Range Development Plan's smaller new hospital.
UCSF was proceeding on its plans to build an out-of-scale 300 foot tall, 15 story new hospital. UCSF is now modifying its plans to build a narrower building that doesn't cross Medical Center Way, and is retrofitting the existing Moffitt Hospital for beds on the top two floors (14th and 15th), plus other planned facilities are now planned to move to the existing Moffitt Hospital. UC had previously said retrofitting Moffitt was out of the question. This is a win for the communities surrounding UCSF and HANC members working on the hospital enlargement and space ceiling issues.
Now we can ask more questions about how best to utilize the retrofitted Moffitt Hospital, UCSF's projected needs, and perhaps shrink the new hospital height. UCSF says 3,000 people are turned away each year now. Since that's less than ten a day, on average, it's not such a staggering number, and can be accommodated within the more limited space now planned and without the massive expansion previously planned.