News Roundup

Hospital Design Review Ordered
Mid-City site’s plans draw mixed reaction

The Times-Picayune
By Bill Barrow
June 19, 2010

BATON ROUGE — In his first major move concerning the teaching hospital slated for Mid-City, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu has called for a 45-day review of the designs for the $1.2 billion, 424-bed successor to Charity Hospital.

According to a letter to Timmy Teepell, Gov. Bobby Jindal’s chief of staff, and other state officials, Landrieu has instructed the City Planning Commission to assign Goody Clancy, the firm contracted to manage the city’s master plan process, to conduct an “architectural peer review to improve the design.”

Landrieu asked the Jindal administration to direct the state architects to participate: “I look forward to working with (state facilities chief) Jerry Jones and his architects and would ask that you direct them to cooperate fully with my design review team.”

On the same day he made that move, Landrieu withdrew a request that the City Planning Commission act on street closures for the state hospital footprint, bound by South Claiborne Avenue, Tulane Avenue, South Galvez Street and Canal Street. The maneuver could give the city some leverage over what has otherwise been cast as a state project outside the realm of the city’s ongoing master plan process. The street closures, a key procedural step in the preparation for construction, was scheduled for a Planning Commission hearing on Tuesday.

The Planning Commission and City Council already have approved street closures for the adjacent federal Veterans Administration hospital, which is slated for a formal ground-breaking next week. That 200-bed facility will occupy about 30 acres across Galvez.

During his tenure as lieutenant governor and as a mayoral candidate, Landrieu endorsed a new state teaching hospital and showed no desire to join activists pushing for the state to gut and rebuild within the storm-damaged and shuttered Charity shell. But the latest moves suggest the mayor is willing to engage on the design of the hospital, which has drawn mixed reviews from various local planners.

Jones said Friday that his office supports the review, though he did not address explicitly whether there is any likelihood the designs will change. “We don’t anticipate any impact on schedule or costs … and believe (the review) can be accomplished quickly,” he said.

Teepell said the state’s architects will cooperate with Goody Clancy, and the process will not affect Jindal’s promise to begin construction by the end of the year, with the facility opening for patients in 2014.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs projects a 2013 opening for its complex. State contractors are acquiring the land for both sites. The state’s architects are drafting designs in preparation for the state facilities office to seek bids. Separately, Louisiana State University is exploring financing options to borrow more than $450 million to complete the construction budget.

Designs unveiled so far have drawn negative reviews because a parking lot will cover seven city blocks, the portion of the footprint closest to downtown. LSU officials have said the rest of the land would eventually be used for a second phase of construction. The design also has been described as too suburban, fitting in neither with the old medical district across Claiborne or the Mid-City residential districts surrounding the hospitals.

Landrieu alluded to those concerns in his letter, telling Teepell that Goody Clancy could “suggest improvements that will increase its functionality as a medical center, improve its integration into the urban landscape” and “make suggestions for how (designs) can be improved in ways that are consistent with the New Orleans master plan and the development of our comprehensive zoning ordinance.”

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Bill Barrow can be reached at bbarrow@timespicayune.com or 225.892.1716.