UCSF hospital revamp plan creates ill will in the neighborhood - San Francisco Chronicle

The University of California San Francisco touts its plan to build a new 1.5 million-square-foot hospital and research facility at its Parnassus Heights campus as a cure for both the antiquated condition of its current buildings and a severe shortage of beds that is forcing it to turn away about 3,000 patients annually over the past few years.

The first phase of the plan, which has already received a $500 million pledge from the Helen Diller Foundation, “is intended to ensure that UCSF Medical Center can meet the growing — and currently unmet — demand for the complex adult care UCSF provides in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond,” according to UCSF spokeswoman Jennifer O’Brien.

“The unmet demand is is growing every year,” said O’Brien. “That is the scary part.”

But for some longtime neighbors, the scary part is that UCSF’s bold blueprint for a new hospital seems to be a throwback to the contentious growth battles of the 1970s, when the university was constantly at odd with residents over development. Those fights, which included multiple lawsuits, eventually led to a 1976 agreement in which UC Board of Regents imposed a growth cap at the Parnassus campus. If the university wanted to add square footage in one building, it had to be reduced somewhere else.

And for 44 years, UCSF honored that cap, turning its gaze away from its historic Parnassus home, sandwiched between Mount Sutro and Golden Gate Park, to Mission Bay, a former rail yard south of Oracle Park where the university has built a $6 billion health care campus, which includes a new $2 billion children’s hospital.

The UCSF hospital’s presence in Parnassus Heights dates back to the late 19th century.

But no longer. With the Mission Bay campus largely built out, UCSF is making a case that the campus it opened 122 years ago no longer meets the needs of a top-10 U.S. hospital. The current hospital doesn’t conform to current seismic standards. Its operating rooms are half the size of what codes require. The concrete buildings are ugly. The campus lacks open space, greenery and retail, the school argues.

UCSF Vice Chancellor Brian Newman said the goal is not just to create a modern, seismically sound new hospital, but also to integrate the campus into the neighborhood in a way it never has been. Parnassus Avenue would be redesigned as a pedestrian-oriented “main street” with retail and plazas. There would be more central gathering places for staff, patients and community members. Fourth Avenue, which was cut off when the school of dentistry was built, would be extended through the campus.

Construction is scheduled to begin in 2023, and the new hospital is slated to open in 2029.

“The Parnassus campus is in need of some attention and investment,” said Newman. “It needs some love. ... It has not received the level of attention and investment Mission Bay has over the last 25 years.”

Hospital operating rooms are too small for modern procedures, doctors said.

But not all neighbors see it that way. At a recent Planning Commission meeting, resident Richard Drury compared the plan to “plunking down a Salesforce Tower in the middle of a residential neighborhood.” Resident Jeff Cole said he was “very concerned about transit impact and the excessive scale of the project.” The N-Judah train is generally at capacity, and traffic on Parnassus is often at a standstill, he said. Add another 10,000 workers and it would be hard to see how ambulances could get in or out of the hospital, he said.

“Anyone who traveled to Parnassus Avenue before COVID could tell you it was already congested,” he said.

Dennis Antenore, a neighbor who has sat on UCSF’s neighborhood advisory board for 30 years, said that the new proposal has come with a jarring shift in tone. “All of a sudden that whole approach has been thrown out and they are acting very arrogantly — they are going to do what they are going to do, and the impact on the community doesn’t matter,” Antenore said.

Other critics say the plan would worsen the city’s housing shortage by creating thousands of new jobs but not much in the way of housing. While the plan calls for eventually building 762 units, most of that housing would not be developed in the next 10 years. Phase one of the project would include just 142 new units for faculty and students. When the remaining 610 units would be built is unclear.

Calvin Welch, who has been active in the neighborhood since the 1970s, said UCSF’s plan doesn’t commit to the sort of affordable housing, transit improvements, local hire or workforce training the city regularly requires of private developers. As a state agency, UCSF does not require local approvals from the Planning Commission or the Board of Supervisors.

“They will not address their workforce,” Welch said. “This is not rocket science. What is the projected workforce for this new hospital? What kind of salaries will this workforce earn? What percentage of workers will be able to afford what kind of housing? How many will be earning median income? How many will be earning below median income?”