Under California law, all inpatient medical facilities must meet new seismic standards by 2015, ensuring the safety of patients but also the ability to continue to operate and provide care in the case of a maximum predicted earthquake. This is a higher standard than any were previously required to meet (the building code only requires that other types of building be built to a standard that prevents collapse and injury, not continued use) and many hospitals determined that their existing facilities could not be brought up to this standard or that it would be too expensive to do so and have opted to rebuild. That is the case with the California Pacific's Pacific Heights hospital, so the old Jack Tar Hotel was purchased and will be demolished for a new hospital. Unfortunately, due to disagreements with the city over labor issues and a city demand that Sutter Medical, which owns California Pacific, provide charity and other care in return for being allowed to construct a new facility, it now seems impossible to meet the 2015 deadline.

http://www.socketsite.com/CPMC%20Cathedral%20Hill%20Rendering%202011.jpg
http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2013/03/cpmcs_cathedral_hill_campus_compromise_expected_today.html

The project also includes a medical office facility across Van Ness Avenue, connected to the hospital by a tunnel under Van Ness.

California Pacific, Mayor Ed Lee reach agreement on controversial $1.7B Cathedral Hill hospital project
San Francisco Business Times by Chris Rauber, Reporter
Date: Tuesday, March 27, 2012, 6:24pm PDT - Last Modified: Tuesday, March 27, 2012, 7:10pm PDT
Chris Rauber
Reporter - San Francisco Business Times

Officials at California Pacific Medical Center and the city of San Francisco say they have reached a proposed development agreement that would allow the Sutter Health flagship hospital in San Francisco to build its controversial $1.7 billion hospital at the site of the old Cathedral Hill hotel.

In return, according to the agreement's executive summary, CPMC would guarantee to provide $1.1 billion in community benefits over a number of years.

The proposed agreement came after months of negotiation between California Pacific and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee.

As part of the deal, according to a summary provided to the San Francisco Business Times late Tuesday, California Pacific would:
- Provide hospital care for an additional 10,000 Medi-Cal beneficiaries who live in San Francisco.
- Spend $20 million to endow a new Community Care Innovation Fund.
- Contribute $63 million to provide for affordable housing.
- Limit premium increases for city workers and retirees who use the hospital.
- Reserve 30 percent of construction jobs and 200 permanent hospital jobs for city residents.
- Retain more than 6,000 existing jobs and add up to 1,500 new jobs down the road.
- Provide $20 million to support transit facilities and services, and $13 million for pedestrian safety and "streetscape improvements . . . ."

Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2012/03/27/california-pacific-mayor-ed-lee.html

^^Great news! They're hoping to start this work summer!

If all goes well, he said, the commission and the San Francisco Board of Supervisors would agree to the proposed plan by May, and CPMC would be able to proceed with the early stages of prep work by mid-summer.
However, Browner indicated it would take a minimum of 30 days after the April 5 meeting for the Planning Commission to move forward.
“We’re hoping by July,” Browner said. “This project has been delayed long enough.”

Also, there is a pretty nice animation of the project here (http://rebuildcpmc.org/plans/vanness_campus/).

Activists: CPMC deal “unacceptable” and “glaringly deficient”

Well, that didn’t take long.

The same day Mayor Ed Lee publicly announced he had struck a deal with California Pacific Medical Center to build a massive 555-bed hospital on Van Ness Avenue, rebuild St. Luke’s hospital in the Mission and overhaul their medical facilities around the city, more than 70 people took to the steps of City Hall to denounce the controversial deal as a giveaway that, among other things, fails to create enough local jobs.

Lee, whose campaign platform could be summarized as “jobs, jobs, jobs,” has touted the deal as a means to create 1,500 construction jobs, pump $2.5 billion into the economy and get two seismically safe hospitals built.

But skeptics of the agreement, including unionized nurses, affordable housing proponents, employment advocates and others, contend the provisions for permanent jobs only require CPMC to hire 40 residents per year for five years, or less than 5 percent of the total jobs created. The Sutter Health-affiliated CPMC is projecting over 4,170 new permanent jobs across its city facilities by 2030.

“It’s really puzzling, too, and troubling, that this mayor, who has been promoting jobs as his number one priority … could cut a deal with such a low bar and really let CPMC off the hook,” said Gordon Mar of the working-class employment group Jobs With Justice . . . .

Long-time affordable housing advocate Calvin Welch blasted CPMC’s $62 million affordable housing contribution under the plan, a figure that includes $29 million in down payment assistance to help its middle- and lower-income employees buy homes, as “unacceptable” because it covers just a fraction of the project’s impact on the housing market . . . .

Sal Rosselli, president of the National Union of Healthcare Workers representing about 750 CPMC employees, said “Sutter-CPMC has been the worst hospital employer in San Francisco” in terms of wages, safe staffing levels and its approach to unions. He faulted the new deal for not including worker protections . . . .

http://blog.sfgate.com/cityinsider/2012/03/28/activists-cpmc-deal-unacceptable-and-glaringly-deficient/?tsp=1

I just want to know who advocates for sick people in San Francisco who need a hospital that won't collapse around them and crush them to death if they happen to be in one of its beds come the next big quake?

I don't understand why Sutter has to do anything for the city beyond building a 1st class new hospital that meets state law on seismic safety. Isn't that a massive public benefit in and of itself? And which of the city officials will apologize to the relatives of those killed because the city simply made it too hard and delayed approvals too long to get the unsafe hospital replaced in time?

Planning Commission gives preliminary OK to CPMC's Cathedral Hill Hospital
San Francisco Business Times
Date: Monday, April 9, 2012, 7:21am PDT

. . . the Planning Commission voted 5-2 Thursday to give a preliminary OK to California Pacific Medical Center's proposed Cathedral Hill hospital, rebuild of St. Luke's Hospital and other projects, which have a cumulative price tag of at least $2.5 billion . . . .

Plenty of politics still to be played out, but the April 5 vote was a big first step toward implementing a $1.1 billion compromise agreement reached by Mayor Ed Lee and CPMC to end the seemingly endless debate over the Sutter Health hospital's proposal to build a major new hospital, rebuild St. Luke's and do other major infrastructure work in the city.
Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/morning_call/2012/04/planning-commission-gives-preliminary.html

Cathedral Hill Hotel Demolition Paperwork Filed

http://www.socketsite.com/Geary%20and%20Van%20Ness.jpg
. . . CPMC has officially applied for the permit to demolish the Cathedral Hill Hotel.
http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2012/04/cathedral_hill_hotel_demolition_permit_awaiting_approva.html

CPMC cleared one more hurdle...

The final EIR was approved tonight by the Planning Commission.

Also:

The Planning Commission approved exemptions to several zoning laws so the structures can be built as planned. The site of the planned hospital permits a 240-foot-tall building, but the commission allowed the hospital to be 265 feet. At the St. Luke's campus, where the current maximum height allowed is 88 feet, the hospital can be rebuilt at 99 feet and an office building can be 100 feet.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/04/26/BAOH1O98TF.DTL#ixzz1tDVKIsVa

CPMC, city push ahead on hospital talks
Friday, November 16, 2012, 3:00am PST
Chris Rauber

California Pacific Medical Center and the City of San Francisco have quietly resumed negotiating the fate of CPMC’s troubled $2 billion Cathedral Hill project.

Details are scarce. Nobody seems confident that talks will produce an agreement or force CPMC into a corner that could end in cancellation of the proposed 550-bed hospital at Geary Boulevard and Van Ness Avenue and $500 million in other projects, such as a medical office building . . . .
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/print-edition/2012/11/16/cpmc-city-push-ahead-on-hospital-talks.html

Heard on the street: City Hall, California Pacific to announce Cathedral Hill compromise Tuesday
Chris Rauber
Reporter-
San Francisco Business Times

California Pacific Medical Center and City Hall are set to announce Tuesday a compromise that would allow CPMC to proceed on its long-stymied Cathedral Hill hospital project while augmenting a rebuild of St. Luke’s Hospital, insiders say.

The new compromise calls for the Cathedral Hill complex to be downsized from a mammoth 555 beds to just 274, insiders say, while a companion rebuild at St. Luke’s — a CPMC satellite campus in the Mission District — would be expanded from 80 beds to 120.

As a result, the seismic upgrade and renewal projects at the two sites would total 38 percent fewer patient rooms than under the prior 635-bed combination, presumably resulting in less traffic and less disruption at Cathedral Hill and more services — and union jobs — at St. Luke’s . . . .

Under the earlier plans, the new Cathedral Hill campus would have cost upwards of $2 billion and the St. Luke’s rebuild $300 million, for a total of about $2.5 billion including other projects.

A price tag for the new versions isn't yet available.

Back in late January, Mayor Ed Lee said a compromise was “imminent,” and likely to be finalized before the latest, March 12 deadline set for a vote at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors . . . .
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/03/heard-on-the-street-city-hall.html?ana=e_sfbt_bn&u=18181073844f318394da2a024ae62c&page=all

No renderings of the new Cathedral Hill plan yet. I am left to hope they won't shorten the project and underbuild yet another San Francisco building site. What might make more sense would be to move the medical offices across Van Ness to the same block as the hospital itself, eliminating the need for the tunnel under Van Ness and allowing them to sell the land on the east side to help fund the new buildings.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/03/heard-on-the-street-city-hall.html?ana=e_sfbt_bn&u=18181073844f318394da2a024ae62c&page=all

No renderings of the new Cathedral Hill plan yet. I am left to hope they won't shorten the project and underbuild yet another San Francisco building site. What might make more sense would be to move the medical offices across Van Ness to the same block as the hospital itself, eliminating the need for the tunnel under Van Ness and allowing them to sell the land on the east side to help fund the new buildings.

Cutting 241 beds out of these plans is absolutely ridiculously ignorant. 5 years after the buildings are finished, people will be screaming because of a sever lack of beds and treatments facilities/options. It's just flat out dumb.

Cutting 241 beds out of these plans is absolutely ridiculously ignorant. 5 years after the buildings are finished, people will be screaming because of a sever lack of beds and treatments facilities/options. It's just flat out dumb.

You may be right, but you may not. Since you are from Chandler, you may not be aware that the entire state of California is virtually rebuilding its entire hospital infrastructure because of a state law requiring that by mid-decade all hospitals in the state be seismically safe (obviously, the law defines that in greater detail than I can post). In a majority of cases, this requires totally rebuilding them so hospitals are being built all over the state including in San Francisco. Besides these 2 buildings, San Francisco General is in process of building a brand new building (http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1500533) and, perhaps most relevant to your concern, UCSF is building a brand new hospital where there never was one in Mission Bay, and there should be plenty of room to grow larger at that site.

There's also the fact that California Pacific currently owns a lot of land. Besides 2 full blocks on either side of Van Ness Ave where they planned to build this building and a medical office building, they still own the site of the existing California Pacific Medical Center in Pacific Heights. As I suggested above, they could probably consolidate the new 304-bed hospital and medical offices on one block, leaving them 2 additional blocks on which to expand in the future if their own planning tells them it may be necessary. However, San Francisco is not growing much in this part of town which was built out decades ago. Much of the growth is to the south where the new UC hospital is being built.

New UC hospital @ Mission Bay going up
u-TE9BKSXCw

You may be right, but you may not. Since you are from Chandler, you may not be aware that the entire state of California is virtually rebuilding its entire hospital infrastructure because of a state law requiring that by mid-decade all hospitals in the state be seismically safe (obviously, the law defines that in greater detail than I can post). In a majority of cases, this requires totally rebuilding them so hospitals are being built all over the state including in San Francisco. Besides these 2 buildings, San Francisco General is in process of building a brand new building (http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1500533) and, perhaps most relevant to your concern, UCSF is building a brand new hospital where there never was one in Mission Bay, and there should be plenty of room to grow larger at that site.

There's also the fact that California Pacific currently owns a lot of land. Besides 2 full blocks on either side of Van Ness Ave where they planned to build this building and a medical office building, they still own the site of the existing California Pacific Medical Center in Pacific Heights. As I suggested above, they could probably consolidate the new 304-bed hospital and medical offices on one block, leaving them 2 additional blocks on which to expand in the future if their own planning tells them it may be necessary. However, San Francisco is not growing much in this part of town which was built out decades ago. Much of the growth is to the south where the new UC hospital is being built.

New UC hospital @ Mission Bay going up
u-TE9BKSXCw

I really appreciate the expanded explanation. I may sound overreactive, but I have lived in SF, so I somewhat know the situations, but, not nearly as well as you. Good to know about the facilities being built. That alleviates some of my concern.

CPMC's Cathedral Hill And St. Luke’s Plan Approved By The Board

As expected, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors have approved the revised terms for a three-story shorter . . . Cathedral Hill Hospital (and a two-story taller St. Luke’s) to rise in San Francisco. The Planning Commission will review the revised designs in May with a final vote and blessing by the Board expected in July.

http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2013/03/cpmcs_cathedral_hill_and_st_lukes_plan_approved_by_the.html

The new design:


http://www.socketsite.com/CPMC%20Cathedral%20Hill%20Campus%20Revised%20Height-thumb.gif
The height of the proposed Cathedral Hill Hosptial which will be built to accommodate 304 beds (30 of which won’t be built out until the new St. Luke’s is open and has hit an average weekday census of at least 90 patients) has been reduced by two stories within the tower and one story within the podium, decreasing the total proposed building height from 15 floors and 265 feet to 12 floors and 226 feet.

While underground parking for the Cathedral Hill Hospital will be reduced from 513 to 276 spaces, the number of parking spaces within the proposed Medical Office Building across the street (542) and conversion of 1375 Sutter Street (172) remain unchanged for a total of 990 parking spaces across the Cathedral Hill Campus.

http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2013/03/the_revised_designs_and_heights_for_cpmcs_new_hospitals.html

good proyect