VENICE – Future buildings to accommodate growth of Sarasota Memorial Hospital’s Venice campus could be up to 150 feet tall after the Venice City Council gave preliminary approval to a new zoning district for the 65-acre campus.
Three votes to create the district – for a code change to create a Planned Public Hospital District, a growth plan amendment for the district and a zoning map change – were all 6-1, with Council Member Ron Smith opposed.
Sarasota Memorial Health Care System asked for the change to unify the public hospital’s master planning process and allow new buildings on the Venice campus to be designed like those in downtown Sarasota and on both planned campuses in the city of North Port.
The current five-story SMH-Venice campus was built within the city’s established restriction for height, as well as floor-area ratio (the percentage of a parcel that can be covered).
Currently, SMH-Venice is a 212-bed hospital.
A $90 million expansion to its emergency department increased the number of emergency care beds from 28 to 61.
A $29 million expansion is also planned for radiology and MRI services.
The new district, which would allow for 150 feet of height and a higher floor-area ratio, means a new tower could include 10 stories, with medical personnel, food delivery and visitors able to travel more quickly via elevators, instead of horizontally along long hospital corridors.
A hospital spokeswoman previously told the Herald-Tribune that a new wing could be as tall as 150 feet but the existing wings were not designed for vertical expansion.
Attorney Jackson Boone noted that benches were installed in the hospital, so friends and family could stop and rest, while visiting loved ones in patient rooms.
Why did one council member vote against the new hospital district?
Smith took great pains to say he supported Sarasota Memorial Hospital but took issue with the thought of allowing a structure to be built 150 feet tall in Venice.
“The discussion should not be about our love of this hospital,” Smith said. “It should be about our fealty to our comprehensive plan and our love of our city and its current scale.
“I believe the only reason for this request is to create a monopoly in Sarasota County for our tax-assisted public hospital,” he added. “You might never see another provider in Venice with this move.”
HCA Healthcare West Florida may disagree with that monopoly assertion. It operates HCA Florida Sarasota Doctors Hospital and HCA Florida Englewood Hospital and recently opened free-standing emergency rooms just outside Venice city limits and in Wellen Park.
HCA Florida Englewood Hospital also envisions opening a sister hospital in Wellen Park.
Smith said he worried that the City Council would lose control over future development along the Laurel Road corridor and later downplayed the efficiency of vertical travel.
“The discussion of vertical being more effective than horizontal is nonsensical to me,” Smith said. “In fact, what we’re doing is approving a vertical on top of a horizontal platform.”
Why did six council members vote in favor of the new hospital district?
Mayor Nick Pachota and Council Member Rick Howard, both of whom have emergency medical experience, cited the speed of elevator travel to clustered services.
“We don’t have enough medicine in general in the state of Florida,” Howard said. “And I’ve been spending my entire lifetime in hospitals as my career.
“I can tell you from an efficiency perspective, coming down one floor rather than walking across an acre to get to your patients, or for those patients to receive their services, is an efficient way to build a hospital,” he added.
Pachota noted that residents have been asking for more health care in Venice since he’s been on the council.
“I don’t want to dwell in the past,” he later added. “I think it should have been done a long time ago.”
Council Member Rachel Frank said she was thrilled SMH “would be able to offer more comprehensive services to our residents and later added she was “just looking forward, the immense amount of services that will be brought into our municipality because of this expansion.”
While none of her three young children were born at SMH-Venice, she noted that she didn’t have that option with her first two.
ShorePoint Health Venice, which closed in 2022, didn’t offer those services.
Council Member Kevin Engelke said that the hospital has been an economic boon to the city, attracting ancillary services from private businesses that do pay taxes.
“To me, this is a gift,” Engelke said.
In recent years, a private rehabilitation hospital, medical office buildings and at least one hotel have either opened near the crossroads of Laurel and Pinebrook roads, or are in planning stages.
Vice Mayor Jim Boldt said he was ”troubled by the fact that we said we have love for our city but we don’t seem to have love for the citizens of the city.
“It is overutilized and it needs to grow,” Boldt said. “To worry about eight stories vs. the people that live here and the fact that they need good health care and this is their only option is mind-boggling to me.”
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Plan to allow Sarasota Memorial’s Venice hospital to grow taller clears first hurdle
Reporting by Earle Kimel, Sarasota Herald-Tribune / Sarasota Herald-Tribune
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