BOYLE HEIGHTS : County OKs Hospital Project’s Last Report

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors’ approval of the County-USC Medical Center expansion’s final environmental report last week clears the way for state and federal funding, and gives neighbors a better idea of when they will have to move.

The $1.1-billion expansion, which will force 250 families from the Marengo Terrace neighborhood to the east, will consolidate all the hospitals at the site into one 2.1-million-square-foot building. The Replacement Project, as it is called, is needed because the main hospital building, which was built in 1932, does not meet fire, earthquake or safety codes.

The proposal now goes to the state Department of Health Services, which must approve funding before June 30. Hospital spokesman Harvey Kern said that property appraisals could begin immediately but acquisitions may take several months.

In hearings Tuesday and April 7, hundreds of Central Los Angeles residents voiced their support for the project to enhance medical services for the poor.

Forty-eight percent of County-USC’s patients receive Medi-Cal--which prompted the state to pay for that same proportion of construction costs.

And because the Jan. 17 earthquake damaged 16 buildings on the hospital campus, an additional $400 million will be available from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for the construction project. The agency allowed the money, which would normally have gone to repair and replace the damaged buildings, to go toward the new project because those damaged buildings would have been demolished anyway.

Residents of Cummings, Cornwell, Chicago, Charlotte and Marengo streets found the supervisors’ decision on Tuesday strangely comforting because it gives them an opportunity to start looking for neighborhoods that they might want to move to.

“It’s the uncertainty of not knowing what’s going to happen to us--where are we going to live?” said Amparo Juarez, a longtime resident of Cummings Street.

She delivered an emotional address to the supervisors from the residents lamenting the loss of the neighborhood over the years to county facilities such as the hospital, Juvenile Hall and the former county Road Department.

“For the people of this community, and sadly for most of us who are Mexicans, Mexican Americans and Latinos, it appears that we are repeatedly being asked to relocate and find somewhere else to live because either a baseball stadium has to be built, a new county facility is needed, a freeway is required, a prison or jail is demanded or a school requires a bigger playground,” Juarez told the supervisors. “This has been a historic scenario for the people of our community.

“This is the closing chapter on a grand community of families who have had courage enough to make a home in the inner city in spite of its rigors, and now it will be turned into parking structures and street improvements.”

On Tuesday, the board also voted down Supervisor Mike Antonovich’s proposals that families not be living in overcrowded conditions and be legal residents in order to receive compensation for their homes and moving expenses.

Officials estimate the county will save $45 million annually after the new hospital is built because of improved efficiency and reduced operating costs.