>Joy in Westwood, frustration in Ridgewood
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, 2012
By JAMES AHEARN
RECORD COLUMNIST
Hackensack UMC at Pascack Valley will be the first for-profit, all-private-room hospital in Bergen County.
NEWS THAT the shuttered Pascack Valley Hospital in Westwood would reopen was greeted locally with jubilation. The mayors and governing bodies of towns served by the hospital had supported the move unanimously.
Residents had planted signs in their front yards demanding “Reopen Our Hospital.” It was hard to find anyone who disagreed. If someone did, chances were that he or she worked at rival Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, six miles away, or had a spouse who did.
The contrast between the two communities was marked.
Valley had recently suffered defeat of a planned reconstruction. It called for doubling the hospital’s floor space, making all patient rooms private. More parking would have been necessary, much of it underground. The walls of the new structures would be 94 feet high, compared to 65 feet at present.
The project encountered determined community opposition. After years of controversy, the Ridgewood Village Council voted three months ago against the hospital’s $750-million proposal, terming it “aggressive overexpansion.”
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