Politics & Government

CRR Concludes Case Against Valley Expansion

Group asked planning board to force Valley to modernize without large-scale renovations.

In its final night of testimony on objections to Valley Hospital’s proposed expansion, Concerned Residents of Ridgewood asked the planning board to address neighborhood concerns and force the hospital to scale back renovation plans.

Concerned Residents of Ridgewood, which faced legal objections to much of its testimony since it began presenting its case in August, has poured more than $100,000 in resident donations over the last seven years fighting the last two expansion efforts from the hospital, according to CRR President Peter McKenna.

The reason, residents living near Valley’s 15-acre campus told the planning board Tuesday night, is that the proposal, which would nearly double the hospital’s existing facility, will add traffic to their streets and change the character of the surrounding residential neighborhood.

“The sheer size of Valley’s proposed expansion is completely out of proportion to the size of its property,” Melinda Wagner testified as part of CRR’s presentation.

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She and Marc Harris, another resident who spoke on behalf of CRR, challenged previous expert testimony delivered on behalf of Valley that traffic improvements and a plan to move some outpatient services offsite would prevent the expansion of the facility from causing an increase in intensity of the property's use.

“This will have a massive impact on the community,” Harris said. “You don’t need studies to understand that idea.”

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But in what planning officials have called a “quasi-judicial” process, where legal evidentiary requirements have sometimes restrained the testimony of the group’s non-expert representatives, CRR has struggled to make its arguments against the presentations made over the last eight months by the hospital.

Largely confined to anecdotal evidence delivered by those living nearby, CRR argued that the current proposal contradicts a long-held perception among residents that village zoning and prior resolutions from the council had established a limit on the hospital's growth.

“These past seven years have shown that large corporate interests can upend decades of rational planning,” McKenna said.

Testimony pointed to previous renovations, and the perception of neighbors that additional construction at the hospital had completed more than a decade ago.

"The local hospital, we were told, was as big as it would get," Harris recalled of his move to Ridgewood from New York. "We lived in a village now, not a city."

Valley maintains that the expansion is necessary to modernize its facility, including a move to private, single-bed rooms and the addition of new technology, to remain viable in a hyper-competitive local health care market.

Hospital officials have also pointed to efforts to address resident issues by scaling back their original proposal.

While acknowledging Valley's need for some "reasonable modernization," McKenna urged the planning board to force the hospital to do so without a larger expansion.

"None of us will know what's possible unless you force them to be creative," he said.

"Let's learn from history and force the smart and creative people at Valley to find a new way forward," he added to a standing ovation.

Should the board approve the master plan amendment to modify the hospital zone where Valley’s property is located, the council would need to adopt the amendment with an ordinance.

Three of the governing body's current members – Mayor Paul Aronsohn, Councilman Tom Riche and Councilwoman Bernadette Walsh – were on the council when it unanimously rejected the last expansion in 2011. Deputy Mayor Albert Pucciarelli, an attorney whose firm has done work with Valley in the past, has said he would recuse himself if it reaches the council.

The planning board is scheduled to continue testimony from municipal agencies and village-hired experts at a meeting Nov. 26.


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