EVERETT — Gary Seagrave was thrilled with his new view of Mount Rainier when he added an upstairs bedroom on his Rockefeller Avenue home a decade ago.
“When I got that second level I thought, this is really cool,” said the 41-year-old Boeing engineer, who invested years of his spare time into building the addition.
Earlier this week, Seagrave stood on his back lawn and pointed over his neighbor’s yard to a former soccer field now covered in gravel and construction equipment.
It’s in that spot, less than 100 feet from his bedroom bay window, that Providence Everett Medical Center wants to build a 50-foot-tall utility plant topped with exhaust stacks. If approved, the building will block Seagrave’s view and cast shadows over the homes of his neighbors.
Before it can develop the site, Providence needs the city to amend its comprehensive plan, the document that guides Everett’s zoning and land use.
The hospital wants to be able to construct buildings higher than is currently allowed and prepare for other expansions in the future. Part of the rezone would require landscaped buffers near homes.
Officials of the Catholic hospital say changing the property’s zoning will allow the hospital to keep pace with the health-care demands of Snohomish County’s growing and aging population.
“It’s hard to be a large organization in a neighborhood and we recognize that,” said Patty DeGroodt, the hospital’s chief strategic officer. “Although it’s probably hard for people to believe, we do sit around a table and discuss how we can make things better.”
On Monday, the issue is scheduled to go before the Everett Planning Commission, which is expected to make a recommendation. The Everett City Council is expected to make a final decision in July.
Providence Everett Medical Center has already started construction on a $600 million renovation of its Colby campus that will include a 12-story building on the block bounded by 12th and 13th streets and Rockefeller and Lombard avenues. The hospital’s growth has already incensed other residents in the neighborhood who have lost views of the Cascade mountain range and seen nearly two dozen historic homes removed to make way for a parking garage and hospital tower.
David Brooks, the hospital’s chief executive, said the hospital’s growth is helping to revitalize north Everett and is creating educational opportunities for students at Everett Community College. The hospital also hopes to provide learning programs with a University of Washington branch campus that could open in Everett.
“We’ve got to stay focused on what the big picture is,” Brooks said.
Meanwhile, the small picture is stirring discontent among neighbors.
While the Colby Avenue hospital’s current growth spurt has been public knowledge for years, plans for the utility building have only recently surfaced.
The $40 million utility building is part of the $600 million expansion. The building with diesel-powered emergency generators, cooling towers, a heating system and oxygen storage tank would stretch 344 feet long, nearly the length of a football field. The utility plant will supply heat and cooling and emergency electricity for the entire hospital and is needed for the expansion that is expected to open in 2011.
The hospital originally planned to locate the utility plant near Colby Avenue and 13th Street.
Since then, the hospital changed its expansion plans, working out a land swap deal with Everett Community College. That was something city officials and neighborhood activists encouraged it to do.
In exchange for giving the hospital its athletic field and gym, the college would acquire the shopping center that the hospital owns across N. Broadway from the college campus.
The hospital in the past few years has held more than 20 meetings for the neighborhood and public to discuss its expansion and its impact on the neighborhood. Feedback from those meetings have resulted in design changes and other compromises, DeGroodt said.
“It’s hand in glove with what we’ve both been asked to do and what makes sense,” DeGroodt said.
The new location of the utility plant is on the northern edge of the college’s fitness and sports complex.
Hospital planners say building the plant elsewhere such as the center of its existing campus or underground would cost more or constrain future development.
Neighbors opposed to the project sent letters to the planning department calling the proposed building a “tower of evil” and a “monstrosity” that they say will block views, cast long shadows, lower property values and create noise and air pollution.
A city environmental impact report states the utility plant will cast shadows similar in size to homes in the neighborhood. The report also notes that the college can already build three- to four-story educational buildings on the site.
And the report also cites hospital acoustical and air studies that indicate noise and emissions from the building will meet all city, state and federal rules.
On Memorial Day, Seagrave and a few neighbors delivered 1,000 bright orange flyers to homes in north Everett, urging residents to join their fight.
Seagrave studied the city’s land-use policies and said he thinks he’s found enough holes in the hospital’s plan to justify denying its rezone request. He isn’t holding his breath, though.
“Everybody tells me you’re sunk,” he said. “But I hope I’m not wasting my time.”
Reporter David Chircop: 425-339-3429 or dchircop@heraldnet.com.
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