Park Place  

Community Hospital's new parking garage is spacious, safe, secure, and subterranean

For months, it was a pit, a big, gaping hole where the gracious plaza had once ushered patients and guests into Community Hospital. Curious passersby could study the activity going on down below through several windows set in the temporary security wall around the site. They watched as workers, like inhabitants of an ant farm, bustled about their underground efforts against the constraints of time, weather, and standards of quality.

Amazingly, now that it’s completed, now that the bulldozers and refuse bins have gone and the jack-hammers and welding torches have stopped, now that the temporary wall and its windows have been removed and the plaza has been restored and the trees replanted, you can hardly tell anything ever happened. Except that there are 316 new parking spaces for standard cars, plus an additional dozen spots for handicapped parking.

Best of all, the new Community Hospital parking garage is spacious, safe, secure, and subterranean.

Years in the planning and another in construction, excavation on the new garage began in April 2002 with the removal of approximately 100,000 cubic yards of dirt. Workers dug down in 5-foot increments and built a temporary shoring system as they went until they reached a depth of 50 feet. The wall was designed to support the hospital, to keep it from falling into the hole, while the permanent structure was built.

The garage is part of the $153 million Pavilions Project, which also features:

• Forest Pavilion — 120 new patient rooms, scheduled for completion in 2005.
• South Pavilion — Centralization of the critical-care departments, including an expanded Emergency Department, Clinical Decision Unit, Express Care and Urgent Care clinics, and expanded Intensive Care Unit/Coronary Care Unit, ight new surgery suites, and a comprehensive cardiovascular surgery program scheduled for completion in 2005.
• Remodel and relocation of existing departments — scheduled for completion in December 2006.

The garage is designed with three levels of parking, all below grade. The intent is to bring cars, and their passengers, as close to the hospital as possible.

“One of the nice features of the garage,” says Matt Fardig, project manager for J.F. Otto Construction, the company retained to build the garage, “is once the ER is relocated to the Garden level (part of the Pavilions Project), people will be able to drive into the garage and walk right into the ER.” In addition, there will be stairs and two elevators that will go up to the plaza level.

“We’ve designed the elevators with glass panels so people can see outside and into the garage before they enter,” says Fardig. “There are cameras in every elevator and more than 60 cameras throughout the entire garage. In fact, the whole security command center is in the garage.”

According to Ken Gordon, director of Security for Community Hospital, that’s three times the number of cameras in a normal garage, which provides 100-percent coverage of every angle of the place. Every stairwell houses a camera, and every floor is fitted with numerous emergency call boxes.

The garage is also designed to minimize its underground element with an open, airy atmosphere and artwork. It’s a garage-majal of sorts, complete with 14 compelling color photographs by California artists Doug Steakley, Winston Boyer, and Gale Wrausmann of Carmel, David Gubernick of Carmel Valley, David Hibbard of Menlo Park, and Mark Kayne of Chatsworth. The stunning photos provide visual cues for the different parking levels — Oak, Pine, and Redwood.

All the parking lot shuttle programs remain in place, and valet service will still be available from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. at both the new entry plaza and the Cancer Center entrance.