Here is the text of my September 2006 letter to the Editor of the Tribune Star regarding Union Hospital’s proposed closure of a block of North 7th Street. I grew up nearby, I know the area well, and I still think a new hospital could be built without having to vacate any portion of 7th Street.

Read on!

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To the Editor,

I was happy to read that the Tribune-Star has reformed its Editorial Board after a six year hiatus, and I applaud your group’s recent editorial urging the City Council to gather more information before voting on Union Hospital’s request to close a block of 7th Street. Everyone I listen to on both sides of this issue agrees that the new hospital is an important project for our community, and I think city government can play a role in helping the Union Hospital campus become the world-class medical facility that we all want in Terre Haute. However, I cannot support the hospital’s proposed closure of 7th Street.

As I said at last week’s City Council meeting, I believe Union Hospital has a design problem with many possible solutions. I agree with the Editorial Board’s opinion that it’s unfortunate hospital leaders are only presenting the community with one design — one which requires city government to surrender a block of a major street and places dozens of privately-owned homes squarely in their wrecking ball’s path.

Union’s stated intention to “only go up to Ash Street” means that the homes between 7th and 10th, from Ash to Beech, will be purchased by the hospital, cease paying property taxes, and turn into surface parking lots if the new building is built as proposed. This is not alarmist speculation — hospital administrators shared this with me at one of their Open House events this summer. I have checked the county tax records, and only three of the roughly 330 parcels owned by Union Hospital are in those three residential blocks. The other fifty homes between 7th and 10th, from Ash to Beech, are still privately owned. Go look at them before they’re gone — the hospital tore down one of their three earlier this year.

I was born at Union Hospital, grew up around Collett Park, delivered newspapers to the hospital and its neighbors when I was a kid, and now represent neighborhoods south and northeast of the hospital on the City Council. On visits to Union Hospital and my family home on North 10th over the last 15 years, I have seen firsthand Union’s approach to addressing their parking problem: buy more, sprawl farther. It is time to establish boundaries for the Union Hospital campus, and a parking plan as modern as the new building they have committed to build somewhere on that campus.

A well designed, properly placed parking garage connected to major buildings with pedestrian walkways over street traffic should be a major piece of their campus master plan, but Union’s leaders have made it clear that they prefer to continue developing the surrounding neighborhood into a sea of surface parking lots. Approving their proposed closure of 7th Street would bring city government into direct partnership on this approach. I think there are better ways for us to partner with the hospital.

A neighborhood plan should be in place before seriously discussing the vacation of any major street near the hospital. The data gathered in the recent traffic study should help inform the Parks Department’s Collett Park Master Plan goal of moving the vehicular entrance to the park from 7th and Maple to 8th and Maple — but 8th Street was only studied at its intersection with Lafayette. Changing 8th and 9th Streets back to two way traffic from Maple to at least Lafayette would calm traffic in the residential area south of the park while facilitating use of a new park entrance at 8th, but that scenario was not part of the traffic study. Building a bike path connecting ISU to Union Hospital, Ouabache School and Collett Park has also been discussed in recent years, but the route is still up in the air. The city maintains two blocks of park land on the south side of 8th Avenue, between 3rd and 6th Street, which served the neighborhood that used to surround the hospital — maybe we should give that land to Union so they can grow toward 3rd Street, instead of toward Collett Park.

Where is the vision that brings these elements together? It sure isn’t in anything before the City Council now as we consider whether or not shifting traffic from 7th Street is a good idea. Union Hospital seems oblivious to these neighborhood issues and focused on gathering enough council votes to push through the plan they think is best for them — the only option they are willing to discuss. Even though I support construction of a new hospital and look forward to the local economic and health care benefits we will all enjoy, I cannot support the idea that the only way to help Union Hospital now is to close 7th Street. We can do better.

I hope the City Council will vote down the proposed closure of 7th Street and send Union Hospital’s architects back to the drawing board. As I said in the council meeting last week, if I thought there was any possibility that the hospital wouldn’t build a great new main facility if we don’t close 7th for them, I would be more inclined to support their current plan. In the past few months, hospital administrators have made it clear that they will build somewhere in the 20-plus block campus they now control, regardless of what happens on 7th Street. I am happy to hear that commitment, and whatever the outcome of the 7th Street vote, I will continue working with them, their neighbors, and my colleagues in city government to help Union Hospital find more balanced solutions to their design problems.

Todd Nation
City Council, 4th District