The mission was to rethink the run-through, dilapidated general hospital buildings that lined the East Side as the centre of a vibrant new health-conscious community.
Eighteen months after securing an exclusive negotiation agreement, the selected team for the job will complete the concept plan and take the first concrete steps in a redevelopment program that could take 10 years.
With a $120 million permit for restoration, Centennial Partners have begun design work on the upgrade to prepare the 93-year-old building as a mixed-use center with medical facilities, commercial space and up to 824 residential units.
In the concept plan, Centennial Partners outlined a comprehensive vision for the proposal to remake the 19-storey hospital and its adjacent 41.9-acre campus into a mixed-use neighborhood with affordable workforce and market-rate homes, retail stores, health services, open spaces and public transport links.
Calling the project the “national model for equitable urban development,” it proposed a step-by-step development with a wide range of latitudes of scale, providing scenarios ranging from just 1,480 mixed-income housing units to 4,954 to 4,954 to 46 million square feet of commercial space.
The preliminary plan issued in February is the basis for a detailed master plan, with the Environmental Report Centenary Partner expected to be completed by spring.
The items before the supervisor on Tuesday set aside $3.3 million to fund that detailed plan. The motion by director Hilda Solis, who defended the project, would also be permitted to ask county staff to request the inclusion of the iconic building that has been featured for a long time in the title scene of the 62-year-old soap opera of the same name on the National Register of Historic Sites. It is packed with historical and cultural significance, but no hospital was appointed.
The designation guarantees the preservation of historic nature and adds another funding in the form of a tax credit to a plan to fuse public grants with private investments with low-income housing and climate tax credits.
In June, the supervisor approved a non-cost lease of hospital real estate to the development team to implement a two-year remediation, including earthquake upgrades to hospital buildings, demolishing 18 structures spread across campus, demolishing decommissioning measures, replacing decommissioning utilities, and testing to identify soil and materials hazards that require decommissioning. Existing tenants in the building, including the community wellness centre, must be relocated.
Funds that come primarily from state housing grants and federal American rescue plans will provide $106 million to centenary partners led by Primestle Venture Partners, a Latinx-owned company that built a retail center for the city’s redevelopment of the Jordan Downs Housing Project in South Los Angeles. Of the remaining $9 million will be held in an emergency and $5 million will be reserved for county management.
The county will now be responsible for relocating tenants that currently occupy the lower four floors of the hospital building, including a nonprofit wellness center that offers free health programs to surrounding communities and a free health program to the Violent Intervention Program Community Mental Health Center.
The preliminary report draws a calm picture of the challenges the project is facing. Among them are earthquake risk, pollution of dangerous materials, worsening infrastructure, aging and inefficient buildings, defective parking lots, cut roads, fragmented green spaces, and Americans with disabilities make hurdles. Environmental experts, access planners, historic preservation consultants and arborists seek solutions early in their planning.
The underlying issue is the split of the property due to a 40-foot drop between the hospital building and its vast forecourt and the rest of the campus to the west.
The plan calls for the front yard to become a “programmatic heart on campus.” “It acts as an entry into a renovated hospital, as a community porch, leading to involvement and interaction.”
The distribution plan, with new entries from the streets around every aspect to campus, “enables a more elegant approach to the forecourt and campus centre. New parking lots take advantage of grades, hide parking under the front yard and expands community use on the roof.
Additionally, “Coordinated Development, Circulation and Green Space Network” helps bridge the 40-foot grade.
The plan will divide the campus into seven areas for staged development. First, the hospital building itself. The first floor will be “Interior Street,” and the upper floor will be converted into a chunk of 100-250 units to utilize public funding sources.
The rest of the campus is a mix of 49-991 units of open space, new offices, retail space and residential buildings.
Initial correction work on vacant floors in hospital buildings should begin in December. The main tasks will continue in the spring after the master plan is completed and the environmental impact report is prepared.
Through its dominant presence on the East Side and serving the low-income residents there, the hospital has an emotional bond with many who have become prominent.
The city’s then large building, funded by the bond issuance in 1923, was completed in 1932 and opened the following year on a noble mission carved into stone at the entrance.
For many years, the general hospital continued to take over the poor people of the city.
As early as the 1960s, the facility was nervous to meet the demands of new medical technology. Due to a lack of air conditioning and fire sprinklers, it did not comply with air quality and fire standards tightening.
The supervisor voted to begin construction of alternatives in 1990.
On January 17, 1994, the Northridge earthquake forced the permanent closure of 166 bed psychiatric units, creating new state seismic standards for hospitals that require structural upgrades of large buildings.
The general hospital was closed on November 7, 2008 as the new nearby county USC Medical Center was finally completed.
To a limited extent, it remains a community asset with an Art Deco vestibule that is still open to the public. The Wellness Center occupies much of its vast first floor, with several research teams and training programs using space up to four floors. However, the rest of that 19th floor was abandoned and fell into a state of hanging ceiling tiles, broken light bulbs, peeling skin, rusty piping and dust collections.
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