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Welch Road Medical Offices
The Stanford Hospital and Clinics Medical Board in August passed a resolution voicing the medical staff's support to retain health care office zoning along Welch Road.
The City of Palo Alto is currently exploring whether to consider the feasibility of rezoning Welch Road office space to allow for housing, although no formal Council or Planning and Transportation Commission action has been taken that would initiate or even recommend such a change, according to Lisa Grote, Palo Alto's chief planning officer.
The resolution came at the request of a consortium of medical staff physicians and other health care providers who feared that their current office space on Welch Road would be converted to housing and that their practices would be adversely affected if the public perceived such a change might happen.
The board formally "endorses continued presence of independent medical practitioners in close proximity to the hospital" and "supports preservation of the current zoning status of the Stanford property on Welch Road containing physician office buildings"
Hematologist Sue Sorensen, a Medical Board member recently chosen vice president of the Welch Road Tenants Association, said her group was formed in response to widely publicized news accounts starting in early July, which would have linked the study to approval - granted July 10 - of Stanford's Clinical Cancer Center. That link was dropped by the council, although Palo Alto's Planning and Transportation Commission may continue to study the issue. Some 200 physicians and other health care professionals protested the office to housing conversion at the July 10 meeting.
"We were caught by surprise [that the conversion to housing was under consideration]. Part of our reason for existing is to monitor zoning and other issues that would affect our ability to practice in proximity to the hospital where many of us send our patients," Sorensen said in an interview.
"We don't know what the city is planning, we don't know what the university is planning," she said.
"At this point we have formed an organization that will collect information so that we know what is going on and will represent us with Stanford and the city, so that our interests are not overlooked," Sorensen said.
Meanwhile Larry Horton, Stanford's director of government relations, said the zoning issue is a matter for Palo Alto to decide and that Stanford has no direct interest in promoting housing at the site.
"Our position has always been that if the square footage is adequate on the inboard [hospital side of Welch Road] so that all health care functions can be maintained there, then zoning changes facilitating housing on the outboard [opposite side of the street] might be something to consider," Horton said. The office buildings have been erected by private developers who hold long-term leases from Stanford University, which owns the land.
Malinda Mitchell, chief executive officer of Stanford Hospital and Clinics, said while Palo Alto, the university and medical center all share an interest in finding ways to increase affordable local housing, the hospital sees no benefit in converting medical office to such a use.
Mitchell said that the hospital has no current plans to change the current use of the medical office building it owns at 1101 Welch Road to another purpose.
"There are other places in the area which we've identified publicly for housing use," she told the medical board.
Palo Alto officials have been seeking ways to reduce commuter traffic and create affordable housing in the community for many years.
At its Aug. 2 meeting, the medical board heard a presentation from pulmonary specialist and active medical staff member Andrew Newman. A member of the tenant association's board of directors, Newman said the zoning change would not necessarily trigger an immediate shift to housing, since the office buildings are grandfathered into leases of up to 50 years. However, he said the uncertainty of whether offices can remain at the site - especially given the dearth of alternative office space nearby -was deleterious to practice, and to recruitment of new physicians and patients.
For example, Newman said several Welch Road orthodontists feared the loss of patients because their parents believed that the doctors wouldn't remain at their current location by the end of the four years or so required for orthodontic treatment.
Newman and Sorensen both noted that physicians had no realistic alternatives to Welch Road sites for their practices in the Palo Alto area. She said physicians such as herself make several trips - "walking, not driving, I might add" - from their offices to the hospital each day, making proximity to the hospital a crucial issue.
A total of 239 physicians - 104 faculty members and 135 community physicians - currently maintain office space on Welch Road, according to the Medical Staff Credentialing Office. In addition to physicians, the offices are rented to many dentists, psychologists and other health care professionals.
President of the Welch Road Tenants Association is Richard Ridgley, an orthodontist.
