>A proposal to modify Valley Hospital’s expansion plan by putting parking and other facilities underground is doable
Thursday, February 4, 2010
BY BOB GROVES
The Record
STAFF WRITER
https://www.northjersey.com/news/83520717_Valley_proposal_has_drawbacks.html
A proposal to modify The Valley Hospital’s expansion plan by putting parking and other facilities underground is doable, but handling groundwater during construction would be a problem, a geology expert told the Ridgewood Planning Board.
“It’s technically feasible” to build parking for 2,000 cars and locate hospital mechanicals underground, said Larry Keller, director of geotechnical engineering for Whitestone Associates of Warren. But he said excavation would involve discharging “lots of groundwater” as well as digging through bedrock.
The proposal to go underground – suggested by a consultant to the planning board — is favored by residents who strongly oppose Valley’s original expansion plan.
The original Valley plan calls for replacing two buildings with three new ones and erecting a parking deck — increasing the hospital’s size by 67 percent. But nearby residents worry that those buildings would overshadow their neighborhood. The modified proposal would set the buildings farther back from the residential streets.
Keller was hired by the Planning Board to study whether the modified building plan would work.
“Part of this plan is an assessment of the groundwater, and it would be worthwhile to know now, rather than during construction,” how to pump it out and what to do with it, Keller told the Planning Board late Tuesday night.
Another concern would be how to support structures during excavation which, depending on how far buildings are set back, might encroach on property along Steilen Avenue, to the east, he said….
“I understand the village typically wouldn’t want blasting,” Keller said. The blasting charges are small, and might make for a shorter construction schedule, but would create vibration of nearby property that would have to be monitored, he said.
Raymond Skorupa, the medical planning consultant who last fall recommended the underground parking plan, said Keller’s report hadn’t changed his mind, “but I have a better understanding of the impediments.”
“We’d like to see more of the hospital space below grade,” Skorupa said. But it’s up to Valley to decide how much to spend on the project and to the surrounding community to decide on “the trade-off of going deeper, but having to endure the construction, and maybe more trucks,” he said.
Keller and Skorupa were hired by the Planning Board, and paid with escrow funds from Valley. Board Chairman David Nicholson asked Skorupa to return in three weeks with more options.
…
Valley officials are concerned that underground construction would disrupt the neighborhood and make the hospital vulnerable to Hurricane Katrina-like flooding.
Paul Gould, spokesman for Concerned Residents of Ridgewood, said that argument was “bogus,” because there are no bodies of water near Valley to flood the hospital.
E-mail: groves@northjersey.com
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