Sacred Heart School and Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento are struggling over an expansion plan for the hospital that has ignited an emotional debate on both sides of the issue.

The school and its parents are concerned about the safety of their children during and after the construction of Mercy General’s five-story $90 million cardiac center about 40 feet from Sacred Heart kindergarten classrooms. They worry about the traffic and noise that is certain to come.

Mercy General officials say the hospital must consolidate its esteemed cardiovascular program in one location to meet the needs of patients, cardiologists and surgeons who perform life-saving surgeries on a daily basis.

The project’s history dates to December 2001, when millionaire Stockton developer Alex G. Spanos donated $15 million to build the heart surgery center. For nearly three years, Mercy General officials held planning meetings with neighbors to gather their opinions on designing the facility.

Last October, the hospital filed a proposal with the city of Sacramento to build the Alex G. Spanos Heart Center, to be located between H and J Streets, east of 39th Street.

The project includes a new 171,246-square-foot cardiac care building and new parking capacity, both on site and on property located nearby.

In addition to consolidating Mercy General’s cardiovascular program, the project will help the hospital meet earthquake safety requirements.

Now the project is in the middle of a city approval process that requires going through more than a year of environmental reviews and public hearings. But there has been intense debate and negotiation between Mercy General and Sacred Heart for two years.

Representatives from both sides were among more than 70 people who attended an environmental impact report meeting May 19, directed by city of Sacramento officials.

Ray Burnell, principal of Sacred Heart School, expressed the school community’s “grave concerns about the substantial harsh impact” of the project.

Burnell questioned the ability of elementary age children to have safe access between home and school during construction, which will occur “in an already dense canyon of buildings on extremely tight roadways,” he said.

“People who use these roadways are already highly distracted and stressed, whether taking their children to school or rushing someone to the emergency room,” he said.

Rita Spillane, a school task force member and Sacred Heart parishioner, also voiced concerns at the hearing.

“If you want to get into the hospital or our school, you have to be able to make a 90 degree turn off of J or H Streets,” said Spillane, who has described the Mercy project as “an attempt to shoehorn” the heart center into limited space.

She is also worried about the special needs of people at the project site.

“This is not a ballpark. It’s a hospital,” Spillane said. “You have people accessing the hospital with special needs and you have some little kids who weigh about 50 pounds going to school next door.”

Cindy Holst, director of business development at Catholic Healthcare West, Mercy General’s parent company, explained in an interview that several factors led to the decision to build the heart center at the east Sacramento location rather than at other local Mercy hospitals or undeveloped sites.

She said officials decided that the location was ideal for improving Mercy General’s cardiovascular program. Heart specialists from many hospitals are already in the area, and the central location is more convenient for patients, half of whom come from outside the area.

She added that the cardiologists, cardiac surgeons and staff who “form the heart and soul” of Mercy’s cardiovascular program own offices and homes nearby.

“We felt the risks to our patients, physicians and staff…and risk to the stability of our program outweighs the benefits of pursuing an alternate site,” Holst said.

More than two years ago, Msgr. Robert Walton, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish, formed a school task force which has joined other neighborhood groups in opposition to construction of the new cardiac center.

In an interview, Msgr. Walton said the primary emotion that rose to the surface was concern about “the sheer size and magnitude of the project.”

“Safety is a huge issue,” Msgr. Walton said. “Parents have that concern and I share it.”

Burnell, a task force member, views construction of the new cardiology wing as “a threat to the quality of life in the neighborhood.”

He said two-thirds of the school families live within a mile and a half of the campus.

“We respect that the hospital needs to retrofit, but they’ve come up with a bad plan,” he said. “It’s not smart and compatible land use and raises some grave concerns both during construction and once it’s completed.”

He explained that the duration of the project, estimated to take 16 to 28 months, is also a concern.

“Very intense industrial size construction is going to happen less than a basketball court away from our kindergarten…inflicting severe noise on our kids. That’s a lot for a little person to endure,” Burnell said. The school has 300 kindergarten through eighth grade students.

Mercy Sister Kathleen Horgan, Mercy General’s director of mission integration, has her office in Mercy Medical Plaza and has enjoyed having Sacred Heart schoolchildren and their teachers as her neighbors for the past 13 years.

“We have a spirit of caring for our next door neighbors,” said Sister Horgan in an interview. She noted hat being good neighbors was a tradition begun when the school was built 70 years ago, just 10 years after the hospital opened in 1925.

Sister Horgan has spent much of her religious life as an educator, teaching for a time at Sacred Heart School.

“I am very sensitive to the safety of children and the need for all the good things that help people grow,” she said.

She said the hospital for some time has had safety measures to protect schoolchildren, such as hiring security personnel to oversee weekday pick-up and drop-off periods at the school.

“We’ve never had any incident when a child was in any way hurt. Why would we not now be more sensitive to the need to protect the children?” she asked.

Sandra Meyers, Mercy General’s neighborhood liaison, said in an interview that the hospital has proposed a number of mitigations to reduce the construction disruption to neighbors. They include installing dual pane classroom windows and sound barriers, funding the cost of switching some school rooms within the school if requested, and providing a grant for improvements and upgrades to the school’s facilities.

Sacramento attorney John Lambeth, a spokesman for Sacred Heart’s parent group, said the soundproofing proposal included more than $500,000 in cash, funds to sponsor a major school fund-raiser for five years and an offer of other mitigation measures.

“We’re looking at it, but the question is what can we do with what is offered and how can we make sure the learning environment is protected,” Lambeth said. “It triggers other very expensive upgrades.”

Msgr. Walton said discussions with Mercy General on relocating the school involved sites that weren’t viable.

“I was willing to see the school relocated across the street…if the move would give us the same square footage and the same amount of property,” he said. “Mercy was not prepared to acquire the additional property.”

He added that relocation would also incur a multi-million dollar debt for the school if the hospital did not underwrite the cost of relocation.

At the environmental issues meeting, Lambeth presented a reorientation plan the school developed to construct a building for half the grades on the southwest corner of the school grounds as a possible option to address school concerns.

The plan would pull the epicenter of the school away from the congested traffic area on streets shared by the school and the hospital.

On the day following the environmental issues hearing, which Msgr. Walton described as “very respectful,” he was hopeful that issues related to the heart center which have divided the school and hospital could be resolved.

“We’re still talking and committed to continuing to have private meetings,” he said.

Sister Horgan believes the hospital and school will ultimately resolve their differences.

“On both sides there is a lot of good will,” she said. “When we all come to the table we know we are a Catholic education system, we are a Catholic health care system and we are all working in ministry to the community.”

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