Hospital Groundbreaking Creates Buzz

By Teresa Rochester

There was a definite buzz in the air as construction got under way Tuesday on Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center's multi-million dollar replacement hospital.

Buzz saws roared as construction crews felled several palm and pine trees to make way for the $206 million project's new 520-car parking structure on 16th Street, south of Arizona Avenue. The cutting raised the ire of residents who said hospital officials promised them in February that no palm trees would go down.

"They basically gave us lip service I guess," said Richard Swezey, an apartment owner in the area. "We asked them not to cut down the trees, and they did. There was no regard for the fact these were environs for birds. I'm not like one of these crazy save the tree people, but just to be flat out lied to... and these things go down. "

Ted Braun, spokesperson for the hospital, said hospital officials told the five or six residents present at the February meeting that trees would have to come down but that they would be replaced once the hospital is completed.

"It was conveyed to them that we would have to remove the trees," Braun said. "We also told them they would be replaced."

Braun said that while 35 to 37 trees will come down during the construction, they will be replaced with 67 new trees on 6,000 square feet of landscaping once the projected is completed. He added that the trees needed to come down to make way for the parking structure's driveway.

Completion of the three-story, parking structure is scheduled for January 2000. The groundbreaking for the new hospital, which will replace the existing earthquake-damaged facility, is scheduled for July of 2001. The new 266-bed facility will include new buildings for emergency, diagnostic, bed and orthopedic wings.

The facility is being bankrolled with $72 million in federal disaster funds, supplemented by a bond issue and private philanthropy.

The new hospital - which includes a new 13,000-square-foot Emergency Center, as well as an auditorium, library and museum - is scheduled for completion in 2005.