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Neighborhood report

Debate builds over unbuilt hospital

St. Joseph's plan for a four-story satellite on land it has owned since 1986 prompts opposition from residents.

By BILL COATS
Published December 11, 2005

LUTZ - When St. Joseph's Hospital finally builds a satellite hospital on Van Dyke Road, it will be thoroughly planned and debated.

St. Joseph's has owned the land since 1986. It's building medical offices there now. Twice it has sought state approval for hospital beds, a multiyear odyssey that's now in court. Three times, St. Joseph's has applied to change the land's zoning, which triggered an hour of debate this week.

Now, more deliberations are under way. A zoning judge must write a recommendation for the Hillsborough County Commission. An appeals court must consider whether the state should have approved St. Joseph's bed request.

And Calusa Trace waits.

"We want to welcome them as a neighbor," Gerry Reno, president of the Calusa Trace Master Association, told the zoning judge Monday night.

But Reno argued that St. Joseph's proposal for a four-story hospital would "overpower" Calusa Trace. "The requested facility size is too high and too big," Reno said.

St. Joseph's said the change would make its complex at Van Dyke and Calusa Trace Boulevard slightly bigger, but less busy.

The hospital's current zoning provides for a three-story hospital with a nursing home next door. The proposal would enlarge the hospital without adding patient capacity. And it would eliminate the nursing home.

So St. Joseph's argued Monday night that removing the nursing home while adding hospital beds would reduce the project's traffic by 13 percent.

Reno, whose neighborhood has 520 houses and 250 condominiums, countered that it also would free up the nursing home land for later development.

Paula McGuiness, chief operating officer of the future hospital, said there are no plans for that land.

New architectural standards for hospitals prompted St. Joseph's to plan for a roomier hospital at Van Dyke. The standards call for fewer shared rooms, and more spacious private rooms where family members can visit, screened from hallways. St. Joseph's also wants the Van Dyke hospital to have an atrium, balconies, patient lounges and wider corridors.

St. Joseph's bought its 38 acres and won an initial rezoning before most homes in Calusa Trace were built. The county in 1987 approved 132,000 square feet of development on the site, including a 150-bed hospital.

But the state of Florida also regulates hospital construction by controlling the number of beds. In the late 1980s, it blocked efforts by several area hospitals, including St. Joseph's, to build branch hospitals in north Hillsborough County.

In 2001, St. Joseph's won another rezoning, tripling the size of its plans by adding the nursing home. Calusa Trace persuaded the hospital then to eliminate a trauma center from the plans and to use Calusa Trace Boulevard only in emergencies.

A year later, St. Joseph's went back to the state, seeking approval for 76 hospital beds at the site. Citing the area's population growth, the state approved. But University Community Hospital, which owns the two closest hospitals in Carrollwood and the University of South Florida area, has tenaciously opposed the request. It appealed the state's decision to an administrative law judge, who sided with St. Joseph's last year. Now, UCH has appealed to Florida's 2nd District Court of Appeal. St. Joseph's cannot build its overnight-stay hospital until it wins final approval from the state and courts. It can't build the full 150-bed size because it has asked the state for only 76 beds. And it can't build a four-story model without the pending rezoning.

In Monday's hearing, Andrew Baker, the zoning hearing master, gave a hint of his thinking as nine Calusa Trace residents paraded before him in opposition.

"If they lowered the height but still maintained what they're proposing in terms of beds or square footage, would your opposition be the same?" Baker asked resident Bill Fadok.

Yes it would, Fadok said.

- Bill Coats can be reached at 813 269-5309 or coats@sptimes.com

[Last modified December 10, 2005, 10:13:05]