In the vision presented by Concord Orthopaedics, the sprawl of medical buildings around the Concord Hospital campus will inevitably spill into a residential zone nearby.
The clinic is arguing that the logical direction for that sprawl is toward St. Paul’s School on Pleasant Street, including the 30-acre parcel it bought last year, where it’s planning a new, $6 million facility. Concord Ortho has asked the city to rezone the entirety of that residential district – between the Carmelite Monastery and St. Paul’s – to allow for medical uses.
Bob Carey, an attorney for Concord Orthopaedics, said this is an opportunity for the city of Concord to plan – rather than react – to its expanding medical community.
“Rezoning this now lets the city look at the long-term and plan for the long-term and plan how to accommodate the evolution of this community, as opposed to: this site changes, this site changes, this site changes, and it’s Loudon Road,” Carey said Friday to members of the city’s Economic Development Advisory Council.
Carey acknowledged that the rezoning would likely spell the end of the residential neighborhood there eventually.
“Does one person sell and another 20,000- or 30,000-square-foot medical office building get built? Who knows,” he said. “Does it happen in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years? It probably does, but does it happen all at once? And it may not happen completely, where the whole thing is built out.”
At least one such facility is in the works if the rezoning happens: Concord Orthopaedics plans to build a $6 million, 20,000-square-foot day surgery center on a property it bought last year at 297 Pleasant St., amid a row of houses.
The Economic Development Advisory Council won’t decide its position on the proposal until it has a chance to hear input from the opposing side, the people who live in the neighborhood, who didn’t have a chance to speak before the meeting ran out of time Friday.
The request has pitted the interest of those families, who lined the roadside with signs opposing the plan, against that of the expanding medical community.
Economic development council members said they’ll continue the discussion at their next meeting before making a recommendation to city council, which will ultimately determine whether the rezoning happens.
Carey argued that Concord Orthopaedics is a local success story that is “bursting at the seams” and has nowhere better to expand than the property it bought down the street from its current 264 Pleasant St., clinic. Responding to a question about the feasibility of developing along the to-be-built Langely Parkway north, Carey noted the southern phase “took six to nine years to develop.”
“We don’t have six to nine years,” he said. “There is no land that Concord Hospital has that they could let us use or could give to us. They are also constrained on their own campus. … Much of their property is in conservation, and they’ve got a campus with their own specific needs.”
Concord Orthopaedics Administrator Carl Moskey added that “it doesn’t make any sense for us to be on Loudon Road or other places that are a significant distance from the hospital.”
“Our physicians all day long are going back and forth either to the emergency room or to see patients,” Moskey said, “and it’s important, just from a safety standpoint, just to be as close as possible if there was a problem in the surgery center.”
Carey said it’s a “valid concern” for neighbors to be worried about additional traffic on the congested Pleasant Street, but the surgery center’s impact alone would be “negligible,” he said, compared with the existing 794-car average during the morning peak from 7:15 to 8:15.
“We’re talking 26 cars in the morning peak hours, added to that 700-plus,” he said, “so Concord Orthopaedics wouldn’t be any kind of a tipping point for peak traffic volume. It wouldn’t be noticeable in any way.”
As is, Pleasant Street couldn’t handle the traffic impact if the entire zone were to be built out, he said, but “there are ways to mitigate the volume that would happen” in that case.
Robert Fishwick, who lives in the residential zone and sat in the front row along with several of his neighbors, said he was looking forward to correct what he saw as inaccuracies included within the presentation when the council reconvenes.
“We will definitely be back there to offer our opinions and our side of the story,” he said.