City Council and Authorities Concurrent - Regular Meeting

All right. Is it working? Okay. Uh, good evening everyone. Uh, my name is Namisha Agraal. I am the senior planner at the city of Santa Clara. Uh, welcome everyone. Um, today's meeting is um, uh, two parts. Uh the first part we will have the scoping uh for the environmental impact report and once that is done we have taken in questions then we will um hand it over we as in the city plus the consultants uh we will hand it over to um Sutter and their team the applicants uh for the community meeting part of the um of the of tonight. So um if you have not done already please sign in once you enter there is a signin sheet there and uh we'll get started with the first part. So let me share the screen. Okay, there you go. Got it. Thank you. Right. So the uh city has determined that this project uh Sutter Santa Clara Hospital would require an EIR environmental impact report and uh this is the scoping

meeting. Um city is the lead agency uh for this um for the EIR and ICF um is our lead EIR consultant. So, we have John Cook here um from ICF and also Jennifer Anderson online uh to help us with that. We also have Michelle Hunt from Hexagon um uh she's our transportation consultant. So as for the agenda we'll have introductions and welcome uh which we did um explain the project the proposed project and um a little bit overview of the environment uh environmental impact report process um and the preliminary preliminary scope of the EIR and then um this meeting is to take um public input on the scope of the EIR. The purpose of this meeting is um the city did send out notices um for the notice of preparation out a couple of weeks ago. So this meeting is in addition to those notices uh to take in comment to provide information on the EIR process and to give a brief overview um of the project um and also to get um input from public on the topics that need to be analyzed in the EIR and also the alternatives. So with that I'm going to hand it over um to John for the uh project location and description.

Thank you Nisha. Uh good evening everyone. I'm John Cook from ICF. Uh thanks for your forbearance. I am actually covering for colleagues who couldn't be here tonight. So uh I do need to look at a script. So I apologize for that as I'm uh giving this presentation tonight. So, I'll start by orienting everyone to the project location and the parcels that are involved. Uh, the site includes 2831 and 2841 Mission College Boulevard where we are right now for the hospital site and 28112821 Mission College Boulevard for the parking site. Altogether, the project site covers about 26.7 acres and this is split roughly into 13.6 6 acres for the hospital and 13.1 acres for parking. Mission College Boulevard is located to the east and south and Highway 101 is along the southern boundary. You can hear it. And uh while Mission College is located to the northwest in the Marcato Shopping Center over to the west, the nearest residential uses are about 1,700 ft or about a third of a mile to the west in the city of Sunnyvale. Okay, so this slide is the highle snapshot of what the project includes. First, it includes demolition of existing buildings on the hospital site. The main component to be constructed is an 8story about 850,000 square foot hospital that would reach approximately 185 ft in height. There would also be a helellipad which would be about 154 ft above ground level and a central utility plant. On the site design side, the project includes landscaped walkways, a courtyard, and an eightstory parking garage that would support operations and visitor demand.

So, let's take a deeper dive into the hospital program and services. The hospital would include 302 inpatient rooms which gives a sense of the its overall capacity. The surgical department would have 10 operating rooms and there are 16 labor delivery recovery rooms and 42 perinatal rooms. Critical care would have a 22 bed intensive care unit. Imaging is a major uh element. There'd be two MRI units, three CT scanners, four ultrasound rooms, two radiography fllororoscopy rooms, and two GI endoscopic procedure rooms. Supporting uses include a clinical laboratory, an inpatient pharmacy, and food service areas such as a cafeteria, cafe on the campus. So this is the scoping meeting during the scoping period for the environmental impact report or EIR which starts off the EIR process. So what's the purpose of an EIR? Uh primarily it's anformational document. It helps excuse me the public and decision makers understand the project's potential environmental impacts. Second, it's a problem-solving tool because it identifies ways to avoid or reduce significant impacts of the project through either mitigation measures or alternatives to the proposed project. One key point I'll make, although NI is very visible, environmental impacts are one of multiple factors decision makers consider when deciding whether to approve a project or alternative. So they will consider the content and conclusions of the EIR alongside other factors like need, feasibility and broader policy objectives. So on the last slide it said scoping is

the beginning of the AR process. Here's a bigger picture of it uh as well as where public input comes into play during the process. Scoping as Nisha said began with uh the distribution of the notice of preparation which was on April 10th. uh and this is where agencies and the public can help shape the scope of the draft EIR. So we are currently right in the beginning stages of the scoping period and sorry uh and so next the city is going to prepare take that input received on the scoping period and the city will prepare the draft EIR. Uh when the draft is released for public review, the city will file a what's called a notice of completion with the California State Clearing House and release a notice of availability that the draft EIR is out for public review. That's going to be a 45day minimum public review. That will be the second opportunity after this scoping period for public comment. uh the public and agency will be able to comment on the EIR content at that time and after that point the city will prepare a final EIR that will include responses to comments that were received on the draft. The lead lead agency will then assume prepare findings and if there are significant unavoidable effects of the project what's called a statement of overriding considerations. The process concludes when the lead agency, the city, uh, certifies the EIR, makes a decision on the project to approve or disapprove and files the notice of determination with the state clearing house. So, you can see the big point I'm trying to make here is that there's several steps between uh from where we are today um for for public

input and just general steps in to complete the project. And we can come back to this slide if there are questions later. So this slide shows the preliminary expectation for what the EIR is going to cover uh in terms of impacts of the proposed project. The emphasis that is on issues that are present locally and resources that could be impacted. As an example, although agriculture is a topic under SQUA, there is no agricultural use in this area. So we do not anticipate having to address it in any depth in the EIR. However, the topics on the slide are ones we anticipate analyzing in greater depth because they are present and could be impacted in some way. So, it may be helpful for you if you have comments to categorize them by looking at the this list uh and and re reviewing this list of resources to see what where your concerns may align with these and share that information in your scoping comments to the city. So, how to submit a comment? Uh, the comment period goes through May 11th, and you can do that in several ways. You can send an email to Namisha as the address here. You can send her a good oldfashioned letter, and you can speak up tonight. So, I'm going to turn it back over to Nisha at this point. I

think that's it.

Right. Um thank you John. So now we would be taking in questions uh for the scoping part of the meeting. So um if you are if you're here in the room and have a question please raise your hand. If you're online, you can raise your hand by Zoom. So, I see Karen has her hand raised online. Karen, you are unmuted. You can ask your question.

Can you hear me? Yes. Oh, okay. Yeah, I'm I'm from Our Lady of Peace Church across the street from the project and I see the layout. There's a lot of um a lot of activity along Mission College Boulevard and the buildings are actually further in which is nice for us obviously, but I was curious if you could just show a closeup of the layout so I can get a feel for what that is. What what is that? What looks like greenery, but if you can show me closeup, maybe it's parking. I don't know. So Karen, I think you're asking to see the site plan. So understand the

Yeah. Okay. I can put that up. Can you see the screen? I can't see the screen. I don't Are you able to see the site plan now?

Yeah. It's just I'm trying to figure out how to get it up. It's um You should be able to see the site plan now. Got it. So, it's there's a lot of greenery and gray along Mission College Boulevard. Is that Are those parking spots?

Are you talking about across the street over here? Well, no. Well, on your side of the I'm at the church. Yeah. Where your where your marker is. All that gray area and trees. And is that parking? Right. Some of it. Yes, that is parking. And I think we will have a more in-depth um description of the site uh in the community meeting section of the part of the meeting tonight after the scoping meeting is uh done. So you get a feel for the aesthetic of it. Thank you.

Okay. Thanks. So when is this uh project uh timeline and uh yeah I mean say is this a space uh within this particular uh buildings right so that's where you you would take down these buildings and build the new ones so what's the timeline for that actually

for different uh buildings also if you Sure. Of course. Yeah. That is again um it will be dealt with the uh Sutter will have their presentation and it will be part of that presentation and they can get uh they have a detailed timeline on when they expect the project to start um when they expect the start demolition and then construction. So it will come it just just in the second part of the meeting they have a slide about that. See anybody else online or here? Not seeing any hand raised here in person or online. So we can pivot to the community meeting part of the meeting. That's okay. Still not seeing any hands. So, handing it over to Sutter and um their team to do introductions and take it away from here. Hi everyone. Um, my name is Melissa White. Uh, I'm a VP of external affairs for Sutter Health. Nice to see everyone here and online. Um, we would like to make this more of a conversation. So, if you do have questions, you know, please just raise your hand. We don't want to be speaking at everyone, so we'd love to

just hear from you. Um, we're very excited about this project. We're excited to be in Santa Clara. We have a lot of patients that are down here. And so, we felt there was a real need uh in order to serve our patients and and access to care issues. And so, that's why we decided on this site and that's why we're we're building in Santa Clara. Um, I'm going to hand it over to my colleague Erica and we're going to go through some slides. But again, if questions come up, please raise your hand. We're happy to answer everything. If we don't know the qu if we don't know the answer, then we will get back to you. Thanks, Melissa. Uh we will start to share our slides. All right. So, we're excited to be here um with you all today uh to talk about our new project here in Santa Clara um called Sutter Medical Center Santa Clara. Um so Sutter has been serving uh Northern Californians for more than a hundred years and uh we are really committed to uh providing care for our patients that is both comprehensive um integrated and high quality and we are looking to do that here um in the city of of Santa Clara with our hospital. Um, our vision for the Sutter Medical Center Santa Clara is to create a state-of-the-art hospital where patients

can receive convenient and timely access to outstanding care closer to home. And so, we are going to embark on this journey to enhance access for our patients. Access is really um, as Melissa mentioned, one of the big challenges that Northern Californians face when it comes to accessing health care. Um, you know, a lot of times it takes you a few months to see your provider uh for for a visit or for surgery or you're waiting hours in the emergency room. And so we're looking to help um kind of provide additional uh access points for you to receive care here in the city of Santa Clara. And we'll do that by increasing um both emergency services and inpatient services. We'll also be recruiting hundreds of physicians and advanced practice clinicians here to serve um our hospital. And then we will um be addressing uh the barriers that patients experience when they are seeking care and trying to make it a more frictionless experience um by integrating that care. And then we'll be investing in programs and partnerships to help build our future pipeline of healthcare workers because we do know that there will be a shortage in the future. And so Aceter Health, we will be um you know hoping to be part of that solution um in in really uh you know uh developing our our future pipeline. And so where we're standing here today is the future site of Sutter Medical Center Santa Clara as you can see here in the map. Um this is where we are in terms of the broader Santa Clara County and where other acute facilities are today as well. Um, you can see there's kind of a a semicircle of other acute facilities around here. On average, they're about 8 to 10 miles away and that's about a 15 minute drive without traffic. And so with traffic, that does get to be quite a bit longer. Um, so we

do feel like this is a a great location for us to provide care for our patients here within the city of Santa Clara. and I will pass it off to our colleagues Rana and Jeffrey to walk through um the site in more detail.

Sure. So, I'm going to start with an overview of the site improvements that will be associated with the hospital. Um we will be um the site improvements will include um updates to surface parking. Um so, folks can see my cursor online. surface parking. Um there will also be um new trees and landscape as part of the site improvements. There are currently four driveways and we'll be adding two new driveways. Um one along our lady's way which will serve as the primary access for visitors and staff coming to the site. um they can either park at the garage or swoop around to the main entry of the hospital to drop off and then either go back to surface parking or back to the garage to park. Um there will also be uh a separate entrance for the ED further down along Mission College. If you can see my cursor here, there is a new driveway cut being cut for ambulance services. um and purposefully it is separate from standard vehicles. We also have a service entry for um trucks servicing the hospital and then another entry along Mission College Boulevard that folks can come and drop off or go to the garage. Um the other improvements, there will be new trees and landscape um as part of the site improvements and a new central courtyard that will serve as um the pedestrian access for folks coming from the garage and they can walk through the courtyard space and across to the main hospital. And I will pass it off to my colleague Jeffrey to talk through the hospital itself.

Thank you Rwana. I'm Jeffrey. I am with HK. I'm a architect and senior project designer on the project. I get to share the fun stuff. So, this is a rendering of the main entrance and main drop off for the facility. Uh, it is meant to be very simple and clean and intuitive for wayfinding. It's also an opportunity here to provide green space and park area uh back to the community and for the facility itself. So this is a very green restorative area here that's also a connector space to existing buildings nearby. For the architectural pallet, it's a very clean, crisp, contemporary pallet. Uh it's very fitting for the hospital program within, but also a high-tech hospital within Silicon Valley. This is the other side of the building where this is along Mission College Boulevard where people would be coming in for the emergency department. It is purposefully separated from the other main entry area in order to make sure that it's very easy to see. It's immediately identifiable as emergency and to get people in as quickly as possible. here. Also good to point out uh while we're on this slide uh we're tracking towards uh in terms of sustainability uh lead certification on the project. And now I can turn it over to Alan to talk about the inside of the building.

Good evening. My name is Alan Sue. I'm one of the physicians with Sutter Health and the Palo Alto Medical Foundation uh medical group. Um I've been told to kind of just go over the hospital uh kind of program plan uh what the descript of of what services we're going to provide and in addition we're just happy as a physician to actually provide for the community. I have a number of patients in this area and to provide an acute setting in a a larger facility is again um we really are excited about this project. the overall clinical or program plan for the um Sutter Medical Center Santa Clara. Uh as I mentioned before, there will have 302 inpatient beds, a very robust uh emergency um offering with ED bays and 54 ED bays. Uh we have 12 operating rooms, uh seven cardiovascular suites, five procedure suites, and very importantly, we'll have 30 uh NICU um level three community beds, which is the neonatal intensive care unit. Um we will be again providing advanced surgical and procedure uh suites uh using advanced technologies in Kuna robotics. Um as everyone mentioned we'll have a rooftop he helipad for emergency transport. Uh certain designations actually require um a rooftop he helipad which we'll have um on the hospital and as mentioned uh prior environmentally responsible design and we'll have a lot of serene healing spaces and areas for uh people to go to um kind of relax and and um kind of have and heal from mental aspect. Um we'll have cutting edge digital tools uh to ensure patients have seamless access to care across every setting. Um using uh digital innovation as well as AI and things of that nature to help really uh bring the high technology to the forefront of this hospital um to provide for the community. Here's a little bit more detailed what we call a stacking of the hospital. Um it goes floor by floor on what's offered on each of the specific floors. Um as

mentioned before uh we can go over this a little bit in detail about the first floor that we have the emergency offering um including the cafeteria lobby. The second floor is mainly just the procedural suites and the operating rooms. Um third floor is labor and delivery um along with the NICU. Uh the fourth floor is basically just kind of medical administration. Uh we'll have the inpatient pharmacy and and pathology and lab. On the fifth floor, we'll have the intensive care unit, a robust intensive care unit that I think is much needed in the area. Um, including all the uh support staff. Um, on the sixth and seventh and eighth floor again is just your med surge floors, your general uh floors to provide medical treatment for patients. And then over here, you can see at the top area on the eighth floor is where the helellipad will be located. I'm going to um have Erica come back and talk about um invest in the community and education. Thank you.

All right. And as I mentioned earlier, um part of our uh mission here with the hospital is to invest not only in uh the community but in our people as well. And so we'll be looking to um you know f further develop that future pipeline of healthcare workers with um three different programs um here at the hospital. So, we'll have graduate medical education or GME to help train our next generation of clinicians. We will also have both nursing student clinical placement program and a nursing residency program to help build career pathways for our nurses. And then we will be expanding the radiology school to support our allied health professionals. We do have a radiology school today up at our hospital in Berlingame Sano and we will look to expand that here into Santa Clara. and then I'll have V come up and talk about our construction timeline.

Hi everyone, my name is Vajaram Masahan. Um folks call me V for short. I'm a project manager with Sutter Health. Um a question was raised earlier I think about schedule and um you know this is a critical life safety project. We're very excited um and very motivated to bring this project online as quickly as we can. The earliest I think we will be able to break ground on the project would be sometime in in April of 2027. Um um but it might take a little bit longer to get through the approvals process. Uh but uh our our aim is to move as quickly as we can, as safely as we can. um to uh to start the project. It's got uh we've got durations here that we can um get into if folks have questions, but overall um we hope to have our first patients in by the uh by the end of 2031. I think that's it on the presentation that we have. Um but Melissa, do you want to

No, I was just going to see if there's any questions here. Yes,

my name is Herbier Batia. I am the CEO of the Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce. Um, just a few days ago, I understood from Santa Clair County, they're going to be having even greater cuts around mental health. And I believe the challenges we're already seeing for from perspective that I'm coming from which is the economy which is funding everything else from the behind the scenes. Correct. Um is that we already seeing a generation of workforce that's challenged with mental health.

Can you guys speak to what is the plan to possibly counter or to complement or to address that issue because that was a quite of a surprise to us that of all the things that were getting cut was mental health. And I noticed on the slides you talked about the mental health. Is there something you can speak to to see how we plan to address the gap that might happen or things that might be done to complement the challenges that they're going to face? So you're talking about the services in the hospital? Yeah. I mean someone want to speak to Yeah, just behavioral health.

Um yeah, I can definitely speak to that. I appreciate that comment. That's a very important regarding mental health because I think that's a big gap we have in the community and we do plan to have services in the hospital for mental health. Um there is aspects of you know especially services. Um there's um aspects of really providing a robust service for um specialty as well as sensory aspects of mental health. I think that will be important that we're looking at in the hospital empaths, things of that nature that I think really um kind of strive and we were I think we looked around at different hospital systems to see what they provided from mental health standpoint. I think there was kind of a gap and so I think we'd have a greater emphasis on emergency services for mental health um and also on the specific hospital floors for mental health. So I think that's what we're looking into. We're doing a lot of research to make sure that is supported. Any other questions here? Then do you I'm trying to figure out if there's any questions online. They they do stop the share. Um folks online, any questions? No. I'm scrolling down to make sure any Okay, one last time online. Any folks have questions? Oh, all right. Hold on one second. Teresa, hi.

Thank you for having the meeting. My question is what level trauma center will the emergency department be? Uh so we're not can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah. We're not going to be a trauma designated hospital. Um we felt that the need of the community would not be trauma designation but obviously would be full-fledged hospital emergency services.

Any other questions? online in here. Anyone else have any questions? Okay. Well, thank you all. Thanks everyone for coming. Um, you know, we're we're very excited to be here. If you do have questions, um, we can leave our car card at the front desk. Um but again if anything comes up please let us know. Okay. Thank you. I'm not sure. Sorry you guys, there's a there are some questions online. Do you want to do you want to are you able because I don't know how to do it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. All the questions. So that one is addressed and then this is the one. Okay. Yeah. Right here. Liy.

Okay, Lily, if you are still online or we can respond to you. Sorry, folks. We did not see that you could write things in. Let's see. Lily, are you there? Uh Lily had some question a question about helicopter noise. Um about how many arrivals and departures we'll be having. Anyone can someone answer that? Okay.

We will uh we anticipate not having more than one flight um per 24 hours. Um so that's a conservative estimate. We think we'll be under that uh to less than one per 24-hour period. But uh being conservative, we are uh I think the environmental document will also be analyzing one the maximum of one flight per 24-h hour period. I think we can also use it's easier touch screen. Okay. Um all right. And her gonna show um a closeup of the layout. That was from earlier.

It is. Okay. Sorry about that you guys. Okay. I think it's uh Okay. During events at Levi Stadium, traffic is very congested. Um now, how will par uh patients and emergency vehicles get in and out when the traffic is congested? Cars can even move. Yes, I'm very familiar with this. I worked um at UCSF when they were building the Warrior Stadium. So, we've studied a lot about this, but I will have someone um answer that.

Hi, my name is Michelle Hunt. I'm with Hexagon Transportation Consultants and we'll be completing a transportation section of the EIR. So, we'll be looking at traffic conditions on normal typical days, and we'll also be looking at how the hospital will have access um during periods when there is an event at Levi Stadium and the uh um extra traffic controls and restrictions that are in place at that time and any changes that might need to be made. Okay. Um, all right. We've got a question about on-site open space. Uh, do we really expect people to use it? Um, what will that look like? How will we promote sitting spaces with trees and shade? Um, you know, will we have something to do with bicyclists, a stop where they could go? Um, someone want to talk about that? Um so the central open space on the site plan um shows a large courtyard space where we will have seating and trees um um places for visitors and um folks who work in the hospital to take a break. There will be also um tables and chairs provided as well. We will also have um the required bicycle parking. There will be long-term parking in the garage and there will be um the short-term parking in front of the hospital. And folks, if you want to um still have some questions, you can hit star 9 and we can answer those questions live as well. Okay. Um, any plans to improve the crosswalk

between Setter Health and Our Lady of Peace Church?

Um, that is one thing that the city has asked us to take a look at at our traffic study. So, we'll have to get back to you on that. Uh, let's see. I just want to make sure that we've gotten everyone Um, oh, we got a hand. Hold on. All right. If someone could show me. So Karen, you are uh unmuted. You can ask your question. We see your hand raised.

Thank you. I just uh another question about layout and and entrances. You've already answered it. I just wanted to know who I could talk to about congestion issues. And uh thank you. I'll just follow up later with uh Michelle at Hexagon. I would like to see the site plan and talk about our personal concerns about traffic.

Um any questions that you have about transportation or even any topic you can address to Nimisha and comments on the um scoping of the EIR and we will see all of those comments. They'll be distributed to the appropriate um consultants and subject area experts. So, we'll see all your comments.

Any other questions online? I don't want to miss anyone.

Folks are joining by phone. They can press star.

Yeah, folks are on drive. If you still have a question, please hit star 9. I don't see anything else. Okay. Well, thanks everyone. Thank you so much. And again, if you do have questions, I'm going to just throw back on that slide. We're going to put up a slide that will give you an email um of how to find us. Here is our email. Um, so feel free to send any questions to this email. Santa Clara info@sutterhealth.org. We also have a website um here if you want to get any more information on the project and it'll be updated as um we keep developing this Right. Thanks everyone.