Tuesday, May 4, 2010

UPDATED: Evergreen Redmond Medical Plaza groundbreaking

Evergreen Public Hospital Commissioners at the April 28th Evergreen Redmond Medical Plaza groundbreaking

UPDATED, 5/8:  Evergreen Hospital's Media Coordinator, Sherry Grindeland, announced in an April 29th press release:  "Evergreen Hospital Medical Center Breaks Ground for Evergreen Redmond Medical Plaza at Bella Bottega."  Yes, that's right!  It's a Plaza.  The location is at 8960 - 161 Avenue Northeast.  The Plaza will be four stories tall and open  for business in about a year.
 
"Evergreen Medical Plaza" will house a 16-room Emergency Department (ED) staffed by 75 ER physicians, trauma-trained nurses, social workers and support staff.  It will be open 24/7, with ambulance service.

Two Redmond-based Evergreen Primary Care practices will be merged and integrated into the Plaza. More than 50 employees will staff the primary care center. Thirty-six primary care exam rooms will house the primary care department.  Total Plaza staff is more than 125.

At the groundbreaking ceremony on Thursday morning, April 28, a Commissioner stated the Plaza is "like a mini-hospital".   John Midtling, Medical Director for the Plaza Primary Care called it "a state of the art ambulatory care facility."  There will be no in-patient beds.  Comprehensive laboratory services, CT, MRI, Ultrasound, X-ray will be available.  The plaza medical director was especially pleased to provide the District community better access to  "Specialty Care" services. 

Parking:  Approximately 35 parking spaces within the building are reserved for patients. In earlier April email, Ms. Grindeland wrote, "the owners and managers of the shopping center have designated parking areas for employees which include an area behind QFC and a row of stalls between the movie theater and the mall stores."  But, during the April 28 groundbreaking, two Evergreen executives pointed to the fenced staging area between he Plaza and Coho restaurant as a likely parking location.  
Evergreen Healthcare originally announced availability of underground parking for patients. But, this week, staff confirmed patient parking will not be underground. Rather, patients will park at ground level in the first story.  Emergency vehicles will access the Plaza from the patient parking level.

According to two City of Redmond planners, the project file, and Mayor Marchione, the medical facility was approved by the Design Review Board and Technical Committee originally for three stories but was later redesigned and approved (February) for four stories above grade.  The top two stories (30 feet) of brick and signage will be visible from the adjacent roads (Red-Wood & NE 90th Street).  This is one of three gateways to downtown Redmond.
 
Comments are welcome.  Please send your Letters for publishing to redmondblog@gmail.com  

Redmond Councilmembers John Stilin, Pat Vache', and Richard Cole attended the groundbreaking ceremony.   The Mayor was not present.

By Bob Yoder
Photos by Yoder

8 comments:

  1. Is it such a good idea to put an emergency room right next to a busy theater? The Bella Bottega parking lot often fills up with cars and hoards of people arriving at or leaving the theater -- not really a place that an ambulance should be rushing through. On the other hand, if someone gets run over by an ambulance, there will be an emergency room close by.

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  2. I love the incremental changes (sarcasm). Apparently, they were too cheap to spring for additional underground parking. There WILL be parking problems. This is a very busy shopping plaza - restaurants, retail, theater, drugstore, coffee shop.

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  3. What a fabulous thing. The picture of the building they put up on the property looks like it will be a great looking building. It is nice to see that Redmond is beginning to grow up and provide desired and attractive services to the community. It makes a lot of sense that they will be sharing parking at this location because the medical office building will have most of its business during the week days while the movie theater has most of its businesses during the evening and weekends. All of the employees and people visiting the new office building should also have a positive impact on the restaurants in stores in the shopping center too. I don't think the parking will be a problem.

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  4. Letter from Mayor Marchione in response to my concern of Evergreen Redmond Medical project changed from 3 stories to 4 stories.

    Bob, thank you for your comments on the Redmond (Evergreen) Medical Office Building. I have inquired with staff and received information that I wanted to pass-on to you. You are correct; the Redmond MOB was originally approved as a 3-story building. Following that approval, they applied for a 4-story building. I asked about noticing for the 4-story building. The normal noticing procedure was followed; where the site was posted, mailings were sent to property owners within 500 feet, postings in City Hall and the Library, and posted on the City’s website. The notice specifically pointed out that the new application replaced the previously approved 3-story building with a 4-story building.

    Regarding the view corridor matter, this portion of Redmond-Woodinville Road is not designated as a public view corridor. So, development of this site does not come under these rules.

    I hope that this answers your questions. Please let me know if you have any other questions on this.
    John Marchione

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  5. The Northern Gateway to downtown Redmond will open up to 30 foot brick walls on 90th St and Red-Wood Road...and close off much of the territorial views - green ridges to the South, West, and East. Some residents will loose their view of Mt. Ranier. Design Notes from city Planner Lee:

    "At the intersection, the building will extending approximately 32 feet above the short concrete wall, where the wall and the street are at their highest point. On Red-Wood road, the building will be approximately 26 feet above the concrete short concrete wall. On 90th Street, the building will be approximately 32 feet above the wall at the intersection, and the wall slopes down with the street, and the building gets lower on the west half. The top of the building at the west end of the north side will be approximately 30 feet above the short concrete wall (on 90th street) according to my rough estimates."

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  6. Your use of the term 'Northern Gateway' in capital letters is misleading. This may be what you want to call it, but there is no city-designated gateway at that spot.

    And call it nitpicking, but the Seattle Times, whose affilitation you love to tout, would never let an article go out misspelling the name of the dominant volcano to the south.

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  7. Thank you for commenting. According to Gary Lee, the city Senior Planner for Evergreen Medical Plaza (ERMCP),there are three designated downtown Gateways. Evergreen Medical Plaza welcomes the Northern Gateway.

    :) If I was only as careful spelling Mt. Rainier as I was climbing it! LOL Come back soon for pictures of our majestic volcano soon to be mitigated by the 4-level project.

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  8. Evergreen has no plans, at this time, to install a ramp onto NE 90th Street. Based on our current Redmond (BLS) volume and the competitive effects from Swedish, we estimate approximately five Basic Life Support (BLS) Ambulances per day. Also, because BLS ambulance usually are non-life threatening transports, more often than not, ambulances will not be using their sirens.

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