Alvarado Hospital could be forced to close because of San Diego State's ambitious expansion plans, according to legal documents filed this week.
That contention was part of a three-way legal challenge to the university's plans, filed in San Diego Superior Court.
The city, the hospital and the Del Cerro neighborhood are suing SDSU and the California State University system over growth proposals that call for expanding the campus to handle some 45,000 students by 2025.
The city's opening brief calls the proposed expansion “a 20-year development plan of unprecedented, controversial and dramatic proportion that will extend San Diego State University campus facilities north across Interstate 8 for the first time in history.”
CSU officials had no comment yesterday because they had not seen the briefs. CSU is expected to file its opening briefs in advance of the court hearing, set for mid-July.
The brief by City Attorney Michael Aguirre's office challenges SDSU's contention that it doesn't have to pay for the massive public works required to expand the campus – the water pipes, road widening and other infrastructure.
The city also says the SDSU plan is flawed because it doesn't provide adequate housing for more students, beyond adding room for 300 more students at one residence hall. Less than 10 percent of SDSU's current 33,000 students live on campus. The expansion calls for building another student center on campus and a hotel by Interstate 8.
The hospital's court filing calls it “unconscionable” for SDSU to propose building more than 1 million square feet of classroom and office space next to Alvarado and to knock down the SDSU-owned Alvarado Medical Center, which houses many of the hospital's doctors.
“The loss of doctors and patients, combined with an inability to attract new staff and customers, could ultimately lead to the closure of the hospital,” Alvarado's opening brief states.
The Del Cerro neighborhood group criticizes in its court filings the university's plan to build 540 units of housing for retired professors, graduate students and professors near historic Adobe Falls. Its filing says public safety problems and environmental damage could occur if dense housing is placed in the neighborhood of mostly single-family homes across Interstate 8 from the campus.
Last summer, scores of angry city officials, hospital attorneys and Del Cerro residents traveled to the CSU trustees meeting in Long Beach to challenge the expansion plan. Trustees agreed to wait before approving the plan and directed SDSU President Stephen Weber to meet with the three groups first. The court filings note that before the city could meet with SDSU, CSU certified the expansion plan.
A CSU spokeswoman said yesterday, “It was not a requirement that the president have additional meetings with these groups to certify the master plan.”
SDSU spokesman Jason Foster said: “We made a good-faith effort to establish dialogue with these groups. It took time to get together.”
Lisa Petrillo: (760) 737-7563; lisa.petrillo@uniontrib.com
