.Children’s Hospital Oakland Plans Major Campus Renovation

Children’s Hospital Oakland is moving forward with plans to rebuild its North Oakland campus, with city officials releasing new documents outlining the potential environmental impacts of the project. The hospital, which is required to upgrade its facilities to meet state earthquake safety standards, has proposed major renovations to its main campus on 52nd Street in North Oakland, including a number of demolition and construction projects. As is required for a project of this size, the city’s planning department has just released a full environmental impact report (EIR) that documents the scope of the project and catalogs concerns from residents and neighborhood organizations. 

You can read the full EIR here. 

The project, which will be subject to a number of public hearings before the city council considers it for final approval, would involve the demolition of 67,000 square feet of existing structures and the construction of 400,000 square feet of new buildings. 
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The plan also calls for an increase of 40 hospital beds for a total of 210 on campus and would also result in an increase of staffing by more than 200 for a total of 2,371 staffers on site, according to the city report. 

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In the first phase of the project on the eleven-acre campus, the hospital plans to construct a new six-story outpatient center and renovate four existing buildings, including a cardiac catheterization lab. During this phase, the hospital will temporarily displace roughly thirty hospital beds. The second phase would involve extensive demolition on site and the construction of a wide range of new facilities, including a family residence building, a clinical support building, an acute care patient pavilion, a parking structure, and a new building where helicopters would land. The hospital estimates that each phase would take roughly five years with phase two starting in 2020. Once the project is finished, the hospital estimates that the number of patients and visitors it will see on a daily basis could increase by more than 250 people.

Here’s a summary of the project components and maps of the construction pages, from the final environmental review report (click on the images for larger versions): 

And here’s another rendering of the campus from a hospital presentation: 

The hospital, which formed an affiliation with UC San Francisco last year and is now officially called UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, has estimated that the project will cost roughly $425 million. Officials have said that the UCSF affiliation puts the Oakland hospital in a better financial position to move forward with its campus redesign.

The EIR also goes into extensive detail about potential traffic and parking problems that may arise in the surrounding area. 

The project goes before the Oakland Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board on March 9 (City Hall, Hearing Room 1, 6 p.m.). And the Oakland City Planning Commission along with the City Administrator’s Office will conduct a joint hearing on the plans on April 1 (City Hall, Hearing Room 1, 6 p.m.).