Elmhurst Hospital Center
Will Expand ER
by richard gentilviso

There was a great need for more room in the current 18,000-square feet ER which was built to handle 70,000 patients a year but now sees upwards of 150,000 patients annually.

Elmhurst Hospital Center has received approval from the Department of Transportation to close a portion of Broadway to traffic during a 14-month construction project expanding the hospital’s emergency room (ER) facilities by 10,000 square feet.

"We’re going to make a mess," said Dario Centrocelli, Elmhurst Hospital Intergovernmental Affairs, at the June meeting of Community Board 4 in Corona. Centrocelli said there was a great need for more room in the current 18,000-square feet ER which was built to handle 70,000 patients a year but now sees upwards of 150,000 patients annually.

"The problem is there’s not a lot of space," he said. The ER is located on the Baxter Avenue side of the hospital, and the hospital proposes a two-story addition with a basement on the corner of Baxter and Broadway. That means five construction trailers, two on Broadway and three on Baxter, will be on the site. DOT barriers extending 18 feet out will eliminate two lanes of traffic and the sidewalk along Broadway although the hospital main entrance will remain open to both pedestrians and vehicles.

Centrocelli said the pedestrian sidewalk on Baxter Street will also be closed, although the ramp to the ER will be open, and people will first have to cross to Broadway to enter on that corner. The ER driveway will not be blocked for emergency ambulance access.

Construction will be done during the daytime, with most of the noise coming from dump and cement trucks. The $13 million construction will expand all areas of the ER, notably creating more bed space for ER patients. Centrocelli said Elmhurst Hospital Center’s ability to perform angioplasty without backup cardiac surgery in its ER has brought in more emergency cardiac patients to the center. According to a May 4 article in Newsday, hospital additions are often needed because of the acquisition of more modern equipment.

Centrocelli said further plans at Elmhurst Hospital Center may be in the works. "New York has a large number of hospitals, a large number of teaching hospitals, and these hospitals have invested heavily in new construction and new equipment," Robert Hinckley, deputy secretary for Health and Human Services in New York state, said in the Newsday report.

In a second presentation, Gabriel De La Pena, director of community affairs for the new ‘311’ program in the city, said the 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week service was now fully underway.

The 311 Citizen Service Center for non-emergency city services is always answered by live operators who among them can assist callers in 170 languages. De La Pena said 311 eliminates the need to search over 4,000 entries on 14 pages in telephone directories and provides access to all city agencies and services.

"Over 10 agencies, including transportation, consumer affairs, sanitation, human resources, buildings, and housing preservation, as well as noise, smoking and other quality of life complaints, can be accessed," he said.

A priority of the Bloomberg mayoral administration, 311 is handled by 201 agents who receive approximately 8,000 calls a day. The calls, referenced by number, are either referred to a city agency or answered directly. 311 can be accessed outside New York City by dialing 212-NEW-YORK.

It was announced that a public hearing held by Community School District 24 in conjunction with Community Board 4 concerning property located at 99-02 Roosevelt Ave. as a potential site for a 650-seat public elementary school would be held on June 11 at P.S. 19 in Corona at 5:30 p.m.

Community Board 4 voted to send a letter stating its opposition to use of the site as a public school at its June meeting. "I don’t think it’s a proper site," said District Manager Rose Renda-Rothschild. Board Chairperson Richard Italiano said safety and traffic issues might be a concern at the busy Roosevelt Avenue location.

Community School District 24 continues to be one of the most overcrowded in the city, operating at 111 percent capacity although four new schools or additions will be opened in September. P.S. 239, a new 704-seat school at 1715 Weirfield St. in Ridgewood, and three new additions at I.S. 5 (615 seats at 50-40 Jacobus St. in Elmhurst), I.S. 61 (660 seats at 98-50 50th Ave. in Corona), and I.S. 77 (660 seats at 976 Senaca Ave. in Ridgewood) are all ready to go.

But other projects in District 24 have either been deferred or eliminated. Two new schools with a total capacity of 1,050 seats have been deferred and another new school with a capacity of 700 seats has been eliminated. Altogether, the borough of Queens has lost about 12,000 new seats under the city’s most recent capital building plan for schools.

Funding was reduced for school construction by 53 percent citywide in the plan, announced in April, and District 24 was deprived of about 3,800 classroom seats overall. Originally, the Department of Education had slated 58,143 new seats for Queens over a five-year plan period. But the new plan reduced that amount to 47,189 new seats.

In March, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein said 20,000 new classroom seats would be available this September, the largest expansion of space in 14 years. 15,000 seats would be through new construction, and 5,000 more through use of space formerly occupied by local school districts. In August, 2001, 19 new schools were delayed when a $3 billion shortfall in the capital budget was revealed.

That led Bloomberg to merge the School Construction Authority (SCA) with the Division of School Facilities in his reorganization plan. The SCA was created by the state legislature in 1988 on the grounds that the Board of Education, then the city’s education agency, wasn’t doing a good enough job building schools.