Published March 2005

Providence expansion
should be allowed
The medical center should be thanked for its
foresight and its planned $400 million investment

After 100 years of service to Everett, Snohomish County and beyond, Providence Everett Medical Center is entering its second century of service with an unfortunate emotional dispute on its hands.

The medical center plans to build a $400 million expansion at its north Everett site over the next 15 to 20 years to be able to continue providing first-class health-care services for an area that is expected to reach 1 million county residents in the next 20 years. (See details of the proposed Providence expansion here.)

Few people disagree with the need for more and better health-care services from Providence. That’s not the issue. What is in conflict is the hospital’s planned demolition of 21 adjacent homes in the historic Donovan District, about one-quarter of the original 80 homes built there in the 1920s.

They were officially added to the city’s roster of historical residences in 1999. Now, residents in the Donovan District want to block Providence from expanding into their neighborhood.

Hopefully, the City Council will consider all of the issues and vote to support the medical center’s growth plan — issues such as these:

• Hospital administrators have recognized for more than 20 years that they would need to expand their facility eastward, which appeared to be the best plan even in 1981, when the General Hospital Foundation bought the first of the 20 Donovan homes that its successor, Providence Everett Medical Center, now owns. All of the homes are in the block where the expansion needs to take place. Only one home in the area to be demolished is still in private ownership.
• Despite the fact that it owns those homes, the medical center is trying to accommodate the concerns of their neighbors, even paying for outside consultants to study expansion options in other directions. The independent consultants agreed there is no practical way to go except to the east.
• Even though the Everett Historical Commission originally considered excluding the Providence homes from the historical designation, at its 1998 meeting, the final vote was to include all of the Donovan homes, even though Providence officials told the commission they anticipated a need for the site in the future.
• Today, moving ahead with the planned expansion plan would provide Everett, and surrounding areas, with a completely modernized, high-tech medical facility, a new cancer treatment center, new individual patient care rooms, new parking garages to open up often clogged neighborhood side streets and 2,200 new jobs with annual wages averaging $58,000 a year.
• Blocking the hospital’s expansion to the east would so hamper the pursuit of the most cost-effective and efficient manner of expanding the facility that the medical center might have to consider a new site elsewhere, outside of Everett, with financing that would increase overall health-care costs far more for an immediate move than for a 15- to 20-year phased expansion. That hasn’t been a threat by the medical center, simply a statement of fact.

The importance of the expansion project to the health-care system in the county is also reflected in the recent strong public statement by the board of the Snohomish County Economic Development Council, which noted that the medical center is the third-largest employer in the county, with 3,000 jobs paying an average annual salary of $55,000.

Of even greater importance is the role the hospital plays in maintaining first-class medical care for the county’s residents, its impact on the county’s standard of living and its attraction for more businesses coming into the community. That makes Providence Everett Medical Center an asset that should not be taken lightly.

It’s hard to be against historical buildings, when there is so much good reason to preserve our past. It’s hard to sound callused or disinterested in the plight of residents who love their neighborhood.

But if neighborhood and historical building preservation always won out in competition with that controversial word “progress,” then there would be no I-5 freeway through the east side of Everett, and there would be no Everett Events Center amidst the city’s downtown historic district.

That might be acceptable for many people who perhaps wish neither project had been built, that no neighborhoods had been divided by a ribbon of concrete or that no aging but historic buildings had been demolished for an entertainment venue, even though it is now rejuvenating Everett’s downtown economy.

But in a society where the good of the community rightfully weighs more heavily in the balance than the preferences of individuals or neighborhood groups, it is only right that the medical center be allowed the expansion it planned for the past two decades now that the time has come.

It’s unfortunate that headlines and news stories have concentrated so much on the upset in the Donovan District over the medical center’s expansion plans. Without that, Providence would be getting the headlines it deserves, news stories that any company or institution deserves when it announces a $400 million investment, additional family-wage jobs and expanded medical services in any community.

Providence Everett Medical Center should be thanked for its foresight, planning and expense in working to ensure that the medical care the Sisters of Providence established in the frontier town of Everett in 1905 will continue into the next century, along with the center’s compassion and caring for the poorest of the poor. In 2004 alone, the medical center provided $27 million in charity and uncompensated medical care.

The administrative team at Providence will continue to provide our community with the best possible health care, a nationally recognized care center and the latest advancements in medical treatment — if we let them.

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