A divided Los Angeles City Council voted Wednesday to approve a 101-bed hospital expansion project in the San Fernando Valley, rebuffing efforts by a union-backed coalition that had demanded a more thorough environmental review reports the Los Angeles Times.
The council fell two votes shy of the 10 votes needed to require an environmental impact report on the four-story wing planned by Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills. The vote occurred one day after a coalition of community groups wrote a letter warning that they probably would file a lawsuit if the project was approved.
Councilman Richard Alarcon seized on that letter, saying a costly legal battle would delay the project far longer than an expanded environmental review process. “This project won’t be resolved with this” vote, said Alarcon, who favored an environmental impact report. “I believe this project will be thrust into the courts.”
Alarcon and seven other council members sided with a coalition composed of neighborhood councils, nonprofits, a powerful healthcare workers union and the labor-backed Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy — all of which warned that the hospital expansion would create too much traffic and too few parking spaces. The coalition, Community Advocates for Responsible Expansion, said low-income neighborhoods had been shortchanged by the lack of extensive environmental reviews.
Read it here: Council approves Valley Hospital Project