University Times

UPMC officials this week unveiled a preliminary proposal for expanding the health system’s Oakland campus.

The major component of the 10-year plan, which still needs approvals from the UPMC board, various city planning departments and City Council, is to raze the remaining building of the Oakland Children’s Hospital and build a 12-story facility on the DeSoto Street-Fifth Avenue site.

“Some of you have seen the end result of the tearing down of the DeSoto [Street] wing of Children’s Hospital and replacing the area with grass and keeping that ground fertile for future expansion,” said John Innocenti, president of UPMC Presbyterian Shadyside, at a community information meeting held Sept. 12 that drew an audience of about 20.

Before any new construction can begin, however, several steps must be taken, he noted.

“Right now all our clinical pathology labs are in the main tower of [the Oakland] Children’s Hospital,” Innocenti said. Those labs and clinicians will be relocated to a renovated Rangos Research Center, a nine-story building at Fifth Avenue and McKee Place.

A view toward the Medical Arts Building on Fifth Avenue at the site of the razed DeSoto wing of Children’s Hospital, where UPMC eventually plans to build a 12-story in-patient care facility.

A second project is relocating radiology personnel and equipment from what remains of Children’s, he said. “A significant portion of our radiology [department], the main core — CTs, MRIs — is in the Children’s facility. We have implemented a plan to move them back into the main Presby hospital.”

David Jaeger of the architectural firm Harley Ellis Devereaux described additional elements of the proposed plan. Prior to razing the remainder of Children’s, UPMC plans to build a four-story mixed-use building on top of the Montefiore parking deck at Terrace and Darragh streets. “The purpose of that is intended [to house] whatever other functions and occupants are left at Children’s,” he said.

At that point, “what’s left of Children’s will be torn down and a new facility will be put in its place,” Jaeger said.

That new building’s entrance will be on Fifth Avenue, but set back enough from the sidewalk to preserve some of the current green space at Fifth and DeSoto, which has received a lot of positive feedback from the community, he said.

“This new facility will be primarily for nursing and patient beds and in-patient care,” Jaeger said.

As part of the plan, UPMC has commissioned a traffic and parking study, which is expected to be completed within a few weeks. One of the components of that study, officials said, is expected to be a recommendation to create “a UPMC Oakland campus loop,” by creating a one-way corridor from Forbes Avenue at Meyran Avenue to Lothrop Street up to Terrace Street, and a one-way corridor from Terrace down to Forbes via Darragh Street and McKee Place. Currently, both Darragh and Lothrop are two-way streets. Victoria Street, which connects Darragh and Lothrop, would remain two-way, as would DeSoto Street, officials said.

Currently, there is no timetable for any of the new construction, they added.

—Peter Hart