Concord’s Planning Board should reject the request by Concord Orthopaedics, a 25-doctor practice across Langley Parkway from Concord Hospital, to rezone a nearby residential neighborhood so it can build a large surgical center.

The change would almost certainly spell doom for the closely knit neighborhood of a half-dozen or so houses. Zone the area institutional and that’s what it will become. The city will lose even more housing, including century-old dwellings. The residents of those homes know that.

To truly understand the situation, go to the city’s website, click on “Maps” and then select the interactive viewer, which shows property lines and a search column that lists the property’s owner, acreage and age of the building. Clicking on “layers” on that column allows viewers to add topographic lines and aerial views with terrific resolution. The property in question is 297 Pleasant St.

Concord Ortho’s request may be unprecedented. We can’t recall another effort to have an entire residential neighborhood rezoned. It’s more common to request a variance from the Zoning Board of Adjustment for a nonconforming use. If a surgery center is built on the 30-acre lot, whether by variance or zoning change, one by one the residences will disappear. That means now is the time to decide whether to sacrifice the little neighborhood to permit the expansion of the area’s medical campus. That should occur only after serious study and much public debate.

Concord Ortho, through its lawyer, contends that it’s important to locate the surgery center close to its existing facility, but the new site would be an unwalkable third of a mile away and across a busy road. Since Concord Ortho has facilities in New London, Derry and Windham, proximity hardly seems crucial.

The proposal is more complicated than it might appear. As we understand it, Concord Ortho would like to expand an existing parking lot to the north of its building. To that end it worked a lot line adjustment agreement with the Unitarian Universalist Church to acquire an adjacent strip of property. That property includes a wetland. If Concord Ortho conserves 25 of its new acquisition’s 30 acres, it could mitigate the impact of filling in a wetland.

The medical group does not, as its lawyer stated, expect the extension of Langley Parkway to proceed to its intended intersection with North State Street in the next decade, or perhaps ever. There is buildable land on that route, including land that requires only a minimal extension of the existing road. Nearby land appropriate for development isn’t the problem. Langley Parkway and the expansion of Concord Hospital is.

The hospital, which does not own Concord Orthopaedics but would help operate the planned surgical center, is the city’s second largest employer. Traffic at the Pleasant Street Langley Parkway intersection will, once the hospital expansion is completed, rate an “F” for failing at peak commuter times. That prohibits expansion that makes that problem worse. The solution, however, lies in completing Langley Parkway.

We agreed a few years back that the project should be moved down the city’s to-do list of capital projects, but perhaps it should be moved up again. The alternative is the loss of another, albeit small, residential neighborhood.

Look at the aerial view of the hospital campus and its environs, or take our word for it: Parking lots, all of them paved, impermeable surfaces bad for the environment, take up much of the space. A new surgical center would probably operate for a half-century or more. Will vast parking lots still be necessary? We hope not.

While it might prove more costly, Concord Ortho could conceivably construct the surgery center above an existing parking lot. The council should ask if it has considered that option.

Rezoning the neighborhood would be inconsistent with the goals of the city’s master plan, which unless revised is Concord’s guide for growth until 2030. That plan calls for growth and development that reinforces “the essential character of the city” – and, importantly, “does not undermine what residents value” about it.

That’s precisely what the proposed zoning change would do.