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Hospital plans to leave Takoma Park

Washington Adventist’s ‘strategic vision’ includes Long Branch center, new downcounty facility

Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2005

Click here to enlarge this photo Gazette file photo Washington Adventist Hospital in Takoma Park announced Monday it will be looking for land outside the city to build a new facility and will leave its Carroll Avenue headquarters around the end of the decade.

The reason for the move, said Adventist HealthCare President and Chief Executive Officer Bill Robertson, has nothing to do with the hospital’s protracted, four-year fight with its neighbors and the city over proposed expansion on the Carroll Avenue campus.

‘‘The decision to move the hospital is not driven or even influenced by that,” Robertson said during an interview Friday. ‘‘What we did was say, ‘What is it going to take to be the right kind of hospital for this community for another 100 years?’ and came to the conclusion that 14 acres isn’t big enough; the density required is not consistent with a residential community and that the transportation challenges with the location that we have are difficult for everybody.”

Washington Adventist’s board endorsed the decision Sept. 21 and the board of Rockville-based Adventist HealthCare, the hospital’s corporate parent, gave final approval Thursday.

The hospital must receive state regulatory approval for the move, and given the uncertainty of how long that process could take, Robertson could only guess that the hospital would close its 318-bed facility and emergency room at 7600 Carroll Ave. and open a new campus at a still-to-be-determined location sometime between 2009 and 2011.

What is certain at this point, he said, is that the hospital, which employs nearly 2,000 people, would remain in the downcounty portion of Montgomery County.

‘‘We are committed to the downcounty community, to the primary service area that we now serve, and to the populations that have been our home for 100 years,” Robertson said. ‘‘That’s where we want to provide care, and that’s where we intend to provide care.”

Sites that have been discussed by various members of the community since news of the hospital’s decision got out Friday include the campus of Takoma Academy, a Seventh-day Adventist high school on Carroll Avenue near University Boulevard East just outside of the city limits, and the White Oak area of Silver Spring.

The hospital is tax-exempt. To measure the fiscal impact of the hospital’s departure from the city, Suzanne Ludlow, Takoma Park’s community and government liaison, said she has not yet been able to determine the amount of annual personal property taxes the city collects from physicians associated with the hospital who have offices in Takoma Park

Hospital spokeswoman Euphia Hsu Smith said she does not yet have an estimate for what a new facility would cost since the hospital does not yet know either the full scope of services that it will provide or where the new facility will be located.

However, for comparison, Anne Arundel Medical Center, a 260-bed facility in Annapolis, moved 5.5 miles from downtown Annapolis three years ago, and that construction of the main hospital building cost about $65 million, said spokeswoman Margot Mohsberg. The figure does not include the cost of land acquisition or equipping the new building, nor did it include moving and transportation costs associated with hospital employees and patients.

Keeping a local presence

Washington Adventist President Jere Stocks, who is widely credited with repairing the hospital’s soured relationship with its neighbors and the city since he arrived in February, said the move out of Takoma Park doesn’t mean the hospital is turning its back on the city or the nearby Long Branch and Langley Park communities. In fact, he said, the hospital’s plan to build a new facility in Long Branch, at the city’s northern tip, remains in place.

‘‘The focus of the health center ... in Long Branch is really going through a reprogramming stage right now,” he said. ‘‘The original concept for Long Branch was primarily medical office space, but now our intention is to broaden what that looks like.”

The center, which the hospital intends to build near the intersection of Flower Avenue and Arliss Street, could include primary and specialty medical care, and possibly an urgent care center, Stocks said. ‘‘We are at the very beginning of the process of determining what is needed for the community ... and it will be much more than physicians’ office spaces.”

He also said the hospital is committed to working with Takoma Park on future uses for the main hospital site, which is for zoned single-family residential (the hospital’s presence on the site pre-dates the county’s zoning ordinance, and the hospital operates there with a zoning exception).

‘‘We are in a process of understanding what the long-term impacts are, and it’s hard to say how the community is going to respond,” Stocks said. ‘‘But we feel very confident that we’re going to be very open, and we’re going to discuss the future and what the impact will be on this community.

Takoma Park Mayor Kathy Porter, who said she spoke with Stocks early Friday as he and Robertson notified local leaders about the Adventist HealthCare board decision, said she is optimistic about the future of the site.

‘‘Obviously, we’re very sorry to lose the hospital,” she said. ‘‘It’s been a benefit to the community. I think the fact that we’ve developed a good working relationship with the hospital will help us through the transition.”

‘‘... One of the things that has always been a topic of conversation with the hospital is there’s always been a question about what their long-term plans were,” she said. ‘‘They always said that they didn’t have a long-term plan, so it may be that that’s what they’re looking at now.

‘‘I’m also very hopeful, and [Stocks] did commit to me, that he would continue to work with the community on the use of that site.”

A long-range strategic vision

Robertson could not say where the new Washington Adventist Hospital might be located, though he said building a new facility would be costly.

‘‘Hospitals are very expensive to build new — but what is also clear is that hospitals are very expensive to rebuild,” he said. ‘‘That was the journey that we began with the plan to renovate and expand in Takoma Park.

‘‘I think the challenge to us is to look at the investment to get a new hospital versus what is the investment to [renovate an existing] hospital. Here the oldest piece is 60 years old and will take three phases to renovate in place, costing more than what a new hospital will cost.”

The hospital’s decision to move out of Takoma Park is part of a larger strategy that Robertson said would improve access to health care and add new services for residents in the downcounty area, plus Prince George’s County and the District of Columbia.

Chief among the goals is improving access to health care for low-income and minority residents, which is one reason why the hospital is enhancing its plan for the health center in Long Branch. The hospital also plans to develop a Center for Health Disparities that will combine research, health care and health careers for traditionally underserved populations.

According to a statement released Monday, the hospital will assemble a task force of representatives from the black, Latino, Asian and other communities to help guide the development and operations of the center.

Robertson said the hospital also would continue to work with Casa of Maryland to expand health care services for the immigrant community. And, he said Washington Adventist also would honor its commitment to donate $750,000 toward a new gymnasium as part of Takoma Park’s new community center on Maple Avenue behind the current hospital.

He said announcing that the hospital would leave Takoma Park isn’t part of an effort to negotiate with the hospital’s neighbors, who have been opposed to a new medical office building and parking garage on campus. ‘‘Adventist HealthCare always seeks to work with integrity with our community, and we would not use this type of a ploy relative to a negotiating tactic.

‘‘This is our vision for expanding the mission of the organization in the long-term to continue to meet the needs of the community.”

Recent negotiations

News that the hospital is leaving Takoma Park came at a point when some in the community were hopeful that recent negotiations between Washington Adventist and neighbors would yield a compromise.

In July, Stocks said the hospital’s board had agreed to scale back some of the proposed expansion, but that board members still had to decide on the neighbors’ request for a permanent freeze on any additional development.

Eileen Sobeck, who lives across from the hospital’s entrance and is a member of the group Sensible Growth, was one of four residents who had engaged in formal negotiations with the hospital.

‘‘I wish there had been some intermediate steps between us thinking that there might be something that was doable on the current campus and their deciding that the best alternative was everything [going] somewhere else,” Sobeck said. ‘‘But I’m glad they gave some thought to looking at their long-term needs.”

Sensible Growth opposed the hospital’s plan to put a six-story medical office building and a 1,100-car garage on the southern portion of the campus, and since the hospital started discussing the expansion in 2001, the group won concessions that reduced the size of the project. The group supported, however, the other part of the hospital’s plan, including an expanded emergency room and a new tower of patient rooms.

Sobeck said it seemed the hospital gradually realized it could not work within the confines of its campus, which is surrounded by residential neighborhoods and Sligo Creek Park.

‘‘I hope people listen” to the hospital’s justification for moving instead of assuming that the hospital left because of neighborhood opposition to the expansion, Sobeck said. ‘‘That’s what I want to hear from institutions that are in a community — I want an honest assessment of what their needs are so that we as a community can help them make decisions.”

A ‘ripple effect’

One unexpected casualty of the hospital’s departure may be the Seventh-day Adventist organizations that remain behind.

‘‘The decision of the administration of Washington Adventist Hospital is going to catapult the discussion of what happens to every Seventh-day Adventist institution in the larger Takoma Park area,” said Erwin Mack, a former member of the church’s General Conference Committee, the highest administrative body within the world church, and a well-regarded member of the Takoma⁄Langley Crossroads business community. ‘‘It isn’t going to be just Takoma Academy and Sligo Adventist School. It’s going to be Columbia Union College, the churches, Adventist Community Services, and every institution is going to feel the effect in the long run.”

Many of the hospital’s employees enroll their children in the schools because of excellent academics and the proximity to the hospital, said Mack, who serves on the boards of both Takoma Academy and Sligo Adventist School. And with the Adventist schools’ aging facilities, the departure of the hospital may cause what Mack described as a ripple effect, leaving local Adventist groups to answer some tough questions about their own operations.

‘‘The Adventist community leaders are going to have to sit down and ask themselves, ‘What now?’ ” Mack said. ‘‘There was not even a hint that this could happen. ... Nobody ever expected the hospital to take the position to move: It was planted forever — at least in people’s minds.”

‘‘The primary concern now, even though it’s simplistic, is: ‘What now?’ No one has had time to contemplate the effect on the ancillary institutions, and that’s going to be the big challenge,” Mack said. ‘‘What happens to those institutions, and what could possibly go onto the campus of an abandoned hospital?”

Future uses for the site

Assuming the hospital leaves the Carroll Avenue property and the buildings are torn down, between 30 and 60 single-family homes could go on the site under the current zoning, according to Ludlow, the city’s community and government liaison. She outlined some of the available options in a memo to the City Council distributed Monday.

‘‘Given the high site-development costs (demolition, site remediation, installation of [a] stormwater system and other utilities),” the memo stated, ‘‘and the overall attractiveness of the site, the market-rate homes would likely be very expensive.” Twenty percent of the homes built on the property (between six and 12) would need to be affordably priced homes under the county’s Moderately Priced Dwelling Unit program.

Other uses allowed on the property include places of worship, opportunity housing projects and publicly owned parks and playgrounds. A number of non-residential uses could be permitted by special exception, the memo said, including another hospital or educational institution, large group homes, and private clubs and organizations.

‘‘I think we should be open to different proposals and hear people out, but my thing is I want it to be used in a way that will enhance Takoma Park, and will integrate it in with Takoma Park residents,” said Colleen Clay, co-president of the South of Sligo Citizens Association, which includes an area of the city that has handled much of the cut-through traffic generated by the current hospital. ‘‘So I don’t want to see another use that’s generating a lot of car traffic from outside of the community wherein the community gets limited benefits out of it.”