Alternatives
UCSF’s Draft Environmental Impact Report either did not consider the alternatives below (other than the 2014 LRPD) or dismissed them as being inefficient. Some of the alternatives are:
The Shipyard at Hunters Point
There are hundreds of acres available for development at the Shipyard. UCSF could build an entire campus on the site. It could be designed to accommodate all of the existing activities at Parnassus Heights, the expansion proposed in theCPHP, as well as future growth. UCSF could acquire enough space so that future buildings could be constructed without demolishing existing structures as is required at Parnassus Heights. The Shipyard is an easy commute via 3rd Street to UCSF’s Mission Bay campus, facilitating collaboration between the various divisions at the two locations. Further, the Shipyard could easily accommodate a helicopter landing pad for emergency medical treatment and a ferry landing for visitor access to patients. The helipad would enable UCSF to obtain Level 1 Trauma Center Status for a hospital there. A Level 1 Trauma Center would both expand the geographical reach of UCSF’s health services and be a source of significant additional revenue.
In addition, locating a UCSF hospital and related facilities at the Shipyard would serve to revitalize the community which currently resides in the area as well as providing much-needed health care services in that district. The Cleveland Clinic is a model for how an academic, research and patient care organization, similar in prestige and size to UCSF, revived an entire section of the city by locating most of its operations to a previously disadvantaged area. Prior contamination at theShipyard has been remediated and the only parcel which remains untreated would not interfere in any way with a new UCSF campus. Former San Francisco Mayors Art Agnos and Willie Brown are working together to advance a UCSF development at the Shipyard,. Mayor Agnos made a serious proposal for UCSF to expand at the Shipyard to then Chancellor Julius Krevans 30 years ago.
Mount Zion
UCSF owns Mt. Zion, which was sitting empty until it was reopened in early 2020 to care for COVID patients. The reopening demonstrates the usefulness of having two separate locations to provide continuity of care and revenue. It also demonstrates that two smaller hospitals are a superior alternative to one huge hospital. Mt. Zion occupies an entire city block and is easily
accessible by public transportation as well as being surrounded by existing UCSF medical offices. UCSF did not make a detailed evaluation of this alternative citing, among other things, decreased efficiency for UCSF staff and students. (Mt. Zion is only 2.5 miles from the Parnassus Heights campus.)
The 2014 Long Range Development Plan.
In 2014, only six years ago, UCSF adopted the 2014 LRDP which complies with the Space Ceiling and is still in effect.Under the LRDP, Parnassus Heights was to remain UCSF’s home for classroom instruction, the four schools, adult inpatient facilities, a variety of outpatient clinics, research, housing and support. However, as called for in the 1976 RegentsResolution and the 1996 LRDP, the decompression of space at Parnassus Heights was proposed to continue. New buildings would be added only if old ones were demolished and programs not essential to the campus would be relocated to other sites. Since both the 2014 LRPD and the Space Ceiling are currently in effect and the local community has relied on them, UCSF should not be allowed to dramatically breach them as proposed in the CPHP.
Mission Bay.
UCSF currently operates three hospitals at Mission Bay and originally stated that it expected future expansion to take place at this location. UCSF’s promotional literature extolls Mission Bay as bringing together leading physicians and scientists to accelerate the translation of laboratory discoveries into actual treatments and cures, the same rationale given for the new hospital’s location at Parnassus Heights.
Seton Medical Center
UCSF does not own the Seton Medical Center but may be able to acquire it. It has 357 hospital beds and is located on Highway 280 with good access to both Parnassus Heights and Mission Bay. It serves an important underserved community and would broaden the reach of UCSF beyond the city limits of San Francisco, one of UCSF’s stated goals.
Reimagining Parnassus Heights.
The CPHP envisions a hospital centric Parnassus Heights, dominated by a 16 story structure replacing the current four storyLangley Porter Psychiatric Hospital and Clinics facility. Moving the proposed hospital to another more suitable location would enable UCSF to emphasize its education and research functions by building or converting spaces to classrooms and spaces appropriate for learning and research. In the process it would both enhance its ability attract high caliber students who would appreciate the rustic character of the existing neighborhood and avoid destroying those attributes thatmake Parnassus Heights special. The Moffit-Long hospital complex, planned to be upgraded to comply with seismic requirements, should be more than adequate to fulfill UCSF’s collaboration objectives and its desire to maintain an emergency room in the western portion of the city, in addition to the several that already exist.
UCSF is a decentralized, multi-campus institution that is woven into the fabric of the city of San Francisco, with existing campuses at Parnassus Heights, Mission Bay, and Mt Zion. As such, it is unclear why it neglected the alternative options of siting the New Hospital at a location other than the Parnassus campus, or the possibility of a smaller project on the Parnassus Campus supplemented with development of other existing UCSF sites. Mission Bay is already home to both the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital and the UCSF Bakar Cancer Hospital, so it is clear that proximity to the Parnassus campus has never been a dealbreaker in other institutional development projects, including, specifically, selecting major hospital sites. With their research, educational, and clinical care facilities already spread out over the different UCSF sites, there is no logical reason why this scale of overdevelopment must happen on Parnassus Heights campus.
UCSF’s unwillingness to explore other alternatives that would better serve not just the local communities and the city, but the university itself. UCSF could take this as an opportunity to improve the city of San Francisco and strengthen its community relationships, instead they are forcing a plan that would create animosity among neighbors, lead to years of battles, and damage the fabric of our city.
There are several community groups already organizing to fight UCSF on these and other problematic issues of the CPHP. It is not lost on the San Francisco community that the UC Regents certified a 20 year Long Range Development Plan (LRDP) just 6 years ago. And it should not be lost on the Regents that there was very little community opposition to the 2014 plan, which also called for updating the Parnassus Heights campus and a new hospital to replace the seismically unsound Moffitt building. Most of the groups and individuals challenging the CPHP are otherwise strong supporters of UCSF, including not just neighbors, but donors, alumni, faculty, and patients among them. We all want to see UCSF grow, succeed, and claim its place among the top healthcare institutions of the world, but this does not change the fact that the CPHP is a flawed, expensive, destructive, and ill-considered plan that should not be approved.