UC San Diego is working on a significant revamp of its medical campus in Hillcrest, including plans for a new hospital there.

More than 50 years after it started running what was then known simply as the “county hospital,” the university intends to replace the 11-story UC San Diego Medical Center that stands on the edge between Hillcrest and Mission Valley.

After holding a series of community meetings in June, a planning team for the school is huddling this summer to write a master plan for the 56-acre property that is home to 37 buildings, including that landmark medical center.

While the stated goal is to keep providing most of the hospital’s most important services in Hillcrest, any successful redevelopment proposal will have to address community concerns about noise and traffic that could increase if the density of buildings on the property goes up.


The re-imaginging effort is spurred by state seismic regulations that require older hospitals to receive major earthquake-proofing upgrades by 2030 or close down, said Robert Clossin, UC San Diego’s director of physical and community planning.

The plan is to avoid making extremely expensive repairs needed to bring the building up to snuff, he said.

“The studies are telling us that it reaches a point where you just can’t modify it anymore. It really just reaches its end and, at that point, it’s rebuild time,” Clossin said.


He also said because the medical center must remain operational during construction, planners are looking to construct its replacement in a new spot on the overall campus in Hillcrest. He said the planning team is mulling several spots on the roughly 25 acres of the parcel that are developable. Most of the land the university owns there is so steeply sloped that it’s not feasible for development.

“That’s one of the challenges of San Diego. You’ve got these canyons and plateaus that you’ve got to work around,” Clossin said.

In addition, the university is considering whether to convert some of the existing low-rise buildings — two to three stories tall — on the property into taller structures that could provide office space or housing for staff and faculty members. Clossin said in an era of budget cuts, this strategy could help the bottom line.

“There is such a high demand for housing and medical office space that those uses would be part of a revenue-generation possibility for the campus,” he added.


Leo Wilson, chair of Uptown Planners, a civic group that advises the San Diego City Council on matters involving Hillcrest and five other nearby neighborhoods, said there is some agreement that more housing would make sense, but not at the cost of traffic congestion.

“The big issue that has to be addressed is traffic and providing alternative modes of transportation,” Wilson said, adding that he speaks only for himself because the matter has not been brought before Uptown Planners’ board.

An environmental report will answer the questions about traffic, Clossin said.

For many in the community, the elephant in the room is whether the university will remain committed to San Diego’s urban core.


In 2005, the university’s health system triggered an uproar when it proposed to the University of California regents that it close the Hillcrest hospital and shift all of its operations to La Jolla, where it planned to build the state-of-the-art Jacobs Medical Center. That facility is completed and operating.

At the time, many local and state leaders argued publicly that UC San Diego had a moral obligation to continue offering inpatient medical services in Hillcrest, a part of the city that has a notable number of poor patients who would face long bus rides to La Jolla for the university’s other medical campus. At the same time, nearby Scripps Mercy Hospital in Hillcrest could see a big rise in indigent patients if its UC San Diego neighbor left the neighborhood.

Five years later, the university released a statement that said it was dedicated to keeping a hospital in Hillcrest. Today, some community advocates still worry that UC San Diego intends to significantly downgrade its presence in Hillcrest.

Clossin said that’s simply not the case. While the university has not decided on the specific number of beds that will be built to replace the medical center in Hillcrest, he said, there are certain non-negotiables that definitely will be included in the new hospital.


“We’re maintaining all of the core functionality of that facility. The trauma center, the emergency department, the burn unit, the HIV/AIDS clinic, all of those elements are going to be retained,” Clossin said, adding that current research labs already on the property will be maintained or increased.

The community still has plenty of time to weigh in on whatever redesign university planners devise. A draft long-range development plan, an environmental impact report and a master plan are due late this year or in early 2018, with a formal proposal to be put before the UC regents by late next year.

These plans arrive as Hillcrest continues to struggle with its identity.

Planners and advocates have been wrestling over whether taller buildings should be allowed along University Avenue and debating various proposals that could raise building heights to as much as 200 feet.


UC San Diego’s planning efforts definitely include taller structures, though where, exactly, those structures might end up has not been determined.

Once the planning team settles on the best place for a new hospital, Clossin said, it will be clear which existing buildings will need to be razed and relocated first. The goal is to open the new hospital in 2030, so no one should expect major action soon. But it is possible that some building efforts could proceed earlier than 2025, Clossin said.

The Hillcrest property’s location is far removed from busy Washington Street, and getting the hundreds of vehicles that visit the hospital in and out of the area is a formidable challenge. The site’s topography also makes it a challenge to connect with the rest of the city’s public transportation infrastructure.

“If you’re up in Hillcrest and you look straight down, you can see the Fashion Valley Transit Center. If we could get to that, it would be great, but there is a freeway and a road and a 400-foot grade change that makes it very difficult,” Clossin said.


Some people may also be concerned that the university plans to abandon the physical medical center that has always been a significant source of public investment. Though the building is not expected to be housing patient beds beyond 2030, the planning group is studying whether the facility could be re-used for “non-patient purposes.”

The property is one of the region’s oldest that has continuously been used for medical purposes.

The county opened a three-story brick hospital there in 1904 and ran the facility until 1956, when state engineers declared it structurally unsafe. The county opened the current hospital across the street in 1963 and the newly formed UC San Diego School of Medicine began leasing the 11-story structure, which has nearly 400 beds, in 1966.

UC San Diego purchased the building and the surrounding land in 1980 for $17 million.


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paul.sisson@sduniontribune.com

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