PeaceHealth Expansion Update

Thank you to everyone who wrote letters and spoke at the planning commission meeting in July. We do not have any further updates at this time but will keep you posted when we do. 

Overview of proposed changes to Institutional Master Plan:

• A revised campus development plan and phasing schedule that includes a new West Pavilion and rooftop heli-pad

• Additions to and remodels of existing buildings and facilities.

• Future development of a new medical building and new parking garage on the Peace Health campus

• Upgrades to support facilities and safety improvements at the existing ground helipad

• Revisions to street improvements are proposed

• The existing IMP boundaries, internal zoning areas, permitted uses, development regulations and open space areas are not proposed to be changed.

The Cornwall Park Neighborhood Association Board would like to draw your attention to concerns around the rooftop helipad. Currently we have experienced helicopters flying various paths other than agreed upon in Planned Development Contract #90-21. The new helipad would further increase low altitude air traffic around our neighborhoods and schools. Feedback to St. Joes about current flight path concerns have not decreased our observations of helicopters directly flying over our homes. We are concerned that all options have not been fully explored around how St. Joes can both keep the neighborhood safe and treat those flown in with urgency. To our knowledge, the decision on how the development proposal will move forward is still with the Bellingham Planning Commission. 

Sample letter:

Members of the planning commission, 

I am writing in support of retaining Planned Development Contract #90-21 as we determine how to move forward with the Peace Health hospital expansion. I believe it is in the best interest of the community to apply and enforce this contract until a new revision can be implemented. In 1991, #90-21 was designed to govern flight operations in the vicinity of the hospital at a time of increased air traffic to provide an added layer of public safety but unfortunately it has never been fully enforced. Since that time, helicopter traffic has only increased and will increase again with the addition of another helipad at the hospital. This issue of Helicopter Air Ambulance (HAA) safety is not simply a local one. In 2015, the FAA rewrote procedures for HAA operations. The cover letter on this 2015 instruction states “To address an increase in fatal HAA accidents, the FAA has implemented new operational procedures and additional equipment requirements for HAA operations.” Also included in the reasoning for the document were these two paragraphs dealing with changes to official phraseology:

(1) The term Emergency Medical Service/Helicopter (EMS/H or HEMS) is obsolete. It is being replaced with HAA because, though a critical life and death medical emergency may exist, air ambulance flights are not operated as an emergency. Pilots and operator management personnel should not make flight decisions based on the condition of the patient, but rather upon the safety of the flight. 

(2) Management should discourage the use of the term “mission” to describe flight assignments in operator manuals, training, and risk analysis programs. The emphasis should be on providing air transportation rather than completing a “mission.” The mission concept has been derived from military tactical or combat aviation policies that factor in “acceptable losses,” and may affect the normal commercial civil air transportation go/no-go decisionmaking process.

In summary, please retain and enforce #90-21 applying it to all helicopter operations at Peace Health Hospital until all parties can agree on a superseding replacement. Bellingham was ahead of its time in 1991 when the city implemented #90-21. Let’s stay at the forefront of aviation safety as we add another helipad at the hospital and further increase low altitude air traffic around our neighborhoods and schools. 

Thanks for your consideration,

OLDER UPDATES:

Here are a few images show what the existing 2006 master plan dictates as well as what the proposed changes are to the development plan. (click to enlarge)

St Joe’s 1991 Planned Development Contract

Letter From The Cornwall Park Neighborhood Association:

July 28, 2018

To:               St Joseph / PeaceHealth
From:              Cornwall Park Neighborhood Association
Re:              IMP change proposal

To whom it may concern,

As neighbors and members of the community, we are excited to hear that PeaceHealth continues to look for ways to improve services and patient care at their location here in Bellingham, WA.

As neighbors, we have worked closely with St Joseph Hospital on Master planning that benefited the hospital, the neighborhood, and the community as a whole. Those past collaborative efforts resulted in a plan that reduced negative impacts on the neighbors and surrounding communities while providing for future growth for the institution. The plan to focus new development towards the unoccupied Green Space along Bug Lake and I-5 represented a perfect fit to meet the operational needs and continued growth of the institution, while preserving the relationship with its neighbors.

Though the collaboration in the past was successful in many ways, there are many aspects of the previous plan and agreements that were never met on the behalf of PeaceHealth St Joseph. Decades passed while commitments the neighbors were assured would be met went unaddressed by PeaceHealth. As neighbors, we continued to give the hospital the benefit of the doubt and understood that among the many priorities faced by a Medical Institution of your size, sidewalks, traffic control, and flight path were not listed as a top priority. PeaceHealth's failure to meet their commitments has unfortunately resulted in a lack of trust, and in many ways a difficult relationship between the institution and the surrounding neighborhoods.

To many of us, it came as a great surprise when we were notified that PeaceHealth was beginning the process to rewrite their Institutional Master Plan while so many commitments were left unmet. When we were informed that PeaceHealth no longer planned to honor the agreement to focus new development towards the unoccupied Green Space and I-5, but instead encroach on the neighborhood, we were shocked. With one of the goals even stated on your own website being to create a plan that "identifies & reduces the impacts of institutional development on surrounding areas", it's hard to understand how your institution would even consider siting a 6-story building with an additional noisy, high-risk helicopter landing pad on its roof, 300 feet from its nearest residential neighbor and a little more than a thousand feet from a Elementary School filled with children.

The fact that a community hospital would even consider posing such a safety risk and disruptive plan to our community is immensely disappointing. We're hopeful that PeaceHealth will reconsider their proposal and work with its neighbors to find an alternative solution and compromise which meets the needs of the institution and its neighbors.

Hopeful,
Cornwall Park Neighborhood Association