Organized Labor

Construction of new facilities at California Pacific Medical Center’s Cathedral Hill and Davies campuses will provide work for the building trades over the next two years, if plans are approved by the City. The CPMC’s four campus master plan is a response, in part, to Senate Bill 1953, which was passed after the Northridge earthquake in 1994 and mandated that about 1,000 hospitals in the state make major improvements to meet seismic safety standards by January 1, 2013.

The CPMC plans include renovations at the Davies, California, and Pacific campuses, and building a new $1.45 billion Cathedral Hill medical campus. The new hospital site would be on the block bounded by Van Ness Avenue, Geary Boulevard, Post Street, and Franklin Street in San Francisco, and a new medical office building is proposed across Van Ness Avenue. When it is completed, CPMC’s acute care and women’s and children’s hospital services at its California and Pacific Campuses will be relocated to this new Cathedral Hill Hospital, noted to the CPMC.

CPMC media spokesperson Kevin McCormack said that the fourth campus allows CPMC to “re-envision the focus of its three existing campuses.” The Pacific Campus would become the center for ambulatory care, the California Campus would become the administrative center for CPMC. He said the Davies Campus would emphasize neurosciences and the complementary areas of rehabilitation and skilled nursing. “We have to modernize, renovate, and rebuild certain buildings to meet the future medical needs of our patients,” McCormack said. “We have to be able to expand and be flexible as technology changes and patients’ needs change.”

The hospital site at the proposed Cathedral Hill Campus would replace the existing 10-story Cathedral Hill Hotel and 11-story office building on Polk Street. The new 20-story hospital that would occupy the entire block. A new 10-story Cathedral Hill Medical Office Building would replace the five existing buildings containing small retail and repair businesses, hotels, and apartments on the east side of Van Ness Avenue.

At a meeting of SFBCTC Business Agents last year, Project Manager Frank Luttringer of Herrero Contractors said that the hospital and office buildings would be connected by a pedestrian bridge. Luttringer said there would be work for between 35 and 75 craft employees on the CPMC projects over the two years of construction. “There will be lots of work for plumbers doing the installation of piping for high-tech medical equipment.”

He said much of the mechanical equipment for heating, cooling, and air circulation would be inside the building rather than on the roof. He said there would be a need for highly skilled workers on the projects, including roofers, glaziers, electricians and carpenters. Herrero Contractors constructed a Family Birthing Center at the Davies Campus.

There has been some opposition to the new Cathedral Hill facility from neighborhood groups concerned about increased traffic and disruptions during the construction. Geoffrey Nelson of the Marchese Company, said that his planning consulting firm had conducted dozens of meetings with community groups to address their concerns. He said input from the community meetings was considered in planning for the projects. He said the hospital would provide incentives to employees to carpool or use public transportation to lessen traffic impacts.

The CPMC’s McCormack said, “We’ll be able to address the concerns that people have. The Environmental Impact Report will assess the impact on the neighborhood.” McCormack added that, “The overall impact will be positive for the city and for the region.” He noted that about 60 percent of CPMC’s patients come from outside San Francisco, so the whole region would benefit.

The Davies Campus is on 7.2 acres in the block bounded by Duboce Avenue to the north, Noe Street to the east, 14th Street to the south, and Castro Street to the west. The current complex was built between 1969 and 1971. Retrofit of the Davies Hospital is in process.

After 2020, the Four Campus Master Plan calls for the replacement of the parking garage at Castro and 14th Streets with a new medical office building over underground parking.

According to the CPMC, the Davies Campus plan would “retrofit existing facilities to continue providing emergency room services, acute care and regional rehabilitation programs to the community,” and “build a new medical office building to expand care for patients with neurological disorders, including treatment of patients with ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), muscular dystrophy and other neuromuscular diseases.”

McCormack said there would be great job opportunities with a need for a highly skilled workforce and level of expertise required to build using new technology. He said that the hospital was also committed to using recycled materials and “looking at every possible way to reduce the carbon footprint in construction of the new facilities.”