Focus of Valley Hospital hearings shifts to construction concerns
Thursday June 20, 2013, 4:06 PM
BY DARIUS AMOS
STAFF WRITER
The Ridgewood News
The construction manager retained to oversee the proposed expansion at The Valley Hospital anticipates the first phase of the project, if approved, will take no more than six years to complete, with visible outdoor work lasting a total of 40 months.
In his two nights of presentation before the Ridgewood Planning Board this week, Phil Centineo, senior project manager at Torcon Inc., stressed his commitment to worker and neighborhood safety while asserting his firm’s history of finishing large-scale projects on or before deadline with little impact to the surrounding areas.
Board members and residents living in the hospital’s vicinity, however, questioned several proposed site plan specifics, ranging from the daily number of construction vehicles that will access the work zone to the process in which Torcon selects its diesel dump trucks, among other equipment.
– See more at: https://www.northjersey.com/news/212376731_Focus_of_Valley_Hospital_hearings_shifts_to_construction_concerns.html#sthash.WoPLfGzx.dpuf
In the end, it doesn’t matter what kind of precautions are taken by Valley hospital or to what degree Valley’s hired experts sugar-coat their presentations (re: job interviews). Our neighborhoods, and lives, will be wrecked if this expansion happens. How do we know this? We live here, day in, day out. We see what happens to the neighborhood when there is minor street or utility work being done (it is paralyzed). We see what happens when it rains (the streets are choked with traffic). Experts talk the big talk about following safety regulations and deferring to state guidelines, but we see the plumes of diesel exhaust, daily, coming from the trucks that currently make deliveries to Valley
How can anyone who lives here believe that this expansion won’t have a disastrous affect on our village?
Everything about this sounds like a forgone conclusion to me.
Years of construction with no impact on residents or neighboring schools.
1000 extra parking spaces and no extra traffic.
Double size of the building with no need for additional taxpayer paid infrastructure or services.
Drain millions of gallons of ground water with no impact on aquifer.
Any urban planner would tell you that a project of this size will have a significant impact on the Village.
Is the PB asking the right questions? There all hard working volunteers, but are they even qualified to do so? The Village needs to bring in some experts who are not paid by Valley to look at this project.
It still irks me that the PB will make their decision based upon the testimony of Valley’s Hired experts—-People, who like the project manager, really want the job! Testimony? It was a job interview—–a sales pitch.
PB: please read the comments by #2. Can you really believe this enormous project will have no effect on Ridgewood?
I wish people writing and speaking about this matter would use the subjunctive: would happen, would disrupt, would destroy.
Saying “will” makes this appalling project sound like a done deal, and at least at this moment, it is not, at least officially.
Perhaps it is a foregone conclusion, but the fat lady hasn’t sung yet.
Does the number of trucks really factor into whether or not the Planning Board approves amending the master plan or not? I hope they know what they’re doing.