Fabian Lewkowicz OFF THE CHART: Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center on 15th Street is not slated to finish construction until 2010 according to hospital officials. Complications occurred in the planning phase. Residents try live with sounds of development
WILSHIRE BLVD. — What was once a quiet neighborhood in the heart of Mid-City has been disrupted by the ongoing sound of cement trucks and pounding hammers for the past five years.
The Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center — which sits on a block bounded by Wilshire Boulevard, 16th Street, 15th Street and Arizona Avenue — has been under construction since 2001 and it looks as though the hammering won’t cease until at least 2010, according to hospital officials.
It’s all part of a $300 million project to rebuild the medical center to better serve the needs of the community. The project started in conception in 1995, following the Northridge earthquake, but didn’t break ground until six years later with the construction of an Arizona Avenue Parking Structure, which was completed in 2003. Around the same time, the new parking structure broke ground and handiwork began for the new Central Plant. The new facility, which powers the existing facility, became operational in 2004.
Once completed, the community can expect a series of new buildings connected in the shape of a horseshoe around the existing main hospital, which will come down in pieces around 2009, creating open green space in the middle of the new hospital.
Until then, the residents that live near the medical center will just have to live with the inconveniences that come along with development.
Posie Carpenter, chief administrative officer for the Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center, contends that complaints from neighbors have been minimal.
“We would all love it if we were in our new facility already,” Carpenter said on Friday.
Still, the absence of complaints doesn’t mean the neighbors aren’t feeling a bit impatient.
“It’s horrific,” said Robert Heusser, who has lived on 15th Street across from the hospital for 10 years.
From the sounds of trucks unloading around 6 a.m. to the chatter of construction employees working late at night, living near the medical center can be “overwhelming” at times, said Heusser.
There’s also the noise from the Murray Company office, located in the same building where Heusser lives. At times, Heusser said he can hear office employees arriving early to work, disrupting the morning peace for the residents in that building.
According to Craig Perkins, director of environmental and public works management for the City of Santa Monica, construction is only permitted between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekdays, and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays.
After-hours work is allowed by special permit, for which the medical center has not applied, said Lisa Thornton, permit specialist in the city’s Building and Safety Department.
Aside from the noise, there are other complaints from residents like Heusser, who said he has seen construction workers smoking marijuana in the alley between 14th and 15th streets, though it is unclear whether the construction workers were affiliated with the medical center. Another tenant of the building also confirmed witnessing workers getting high during apparent lunchbreaks.
“Every now and then, the trucks come at night and you hear them in back-up mode,”he said.“Being the only residential building on this block, you’re just in the path of construction.”
The construction company has received a few complaints from residents about the deliveries occurring too early in the morning, admitted one representative, who declined to give his name. Those complaints have died down in the past few months, however, as the Murray Company is trying hard to be a good neighbor, the representative said.
The noise doesn’t bother Beverly Murray, who leaves for work at 7 a.m. and doesn’t return until 6 p.m. But Murray, who lives in the same complex as Heusser, does not like the inconvenience of losing parking spaces directly in front of her building because the hospital construction has taken up half of the northbound lane on 15th Street.
Other residents in the complex say they aren’t bothered at all.
“I work normal business hours, so I don’t even notice it,” said Jennifer Morris, who moved into the three-building complex at 1228-32 15th Street more than a year ago. “I work for an architectural firm, so it doesn’t bother me one bit.
“I know it has to happen.”
When planning began in 1995, hospital officials anticipated the project would be completed by 2004. But delays occurred in the planning phase when officials realized the project was more complicated than expected.
There were complexities involved with integrating the power plant with the existing facilities and upgrading it so it would be able to power all the structures, Carpenter said.
Two buildings that are currently being constructed simultaneously — the North Tower and Southwest Tower — will begin opening in phases, starting in May 2007.
Construction for the entire project is expected to end in 2009. After the horseshoe-shaped complex is complete,the existing tower will be deconstructed beginning in 2010.
The new hospital, which will be called the Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and Orthopaedic Hospital upon its completion, will feature an outpatient clinic,a 14,000 square foot emergency center, a birthing center with a 16-bassinet Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, six new operating rooms and a critical care unit with state-of-the-art medical equipment.
“Unlike getting a piece of property and building a house, this is more like a remodel because we’re living through it,”Carpenter said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 18, 2006. Read the original PDF.