A new General Hospital: Turning an iconic LA landmark into homeless housing
LOS ANGELES — The room is a marvel of architectural oddities. On one wall a cathedral-sized window frames the Eastside skyline. Facing it, several rows of wood-backed theater seats fan out, arching up at a dizzying angle to the ceiling three stories up.
The lone piece of furniture, a bedlike platform, stands on a pedestal in the center of the room.
Unchanged since the last patient left Los Angeles County General Hospital 14 years ago, the operating room encapsulates the rich opportunities and huge challenges for an institution that became too old and decrepit to go on as it was but is too much of a civic treasure to discard.
The hospital’s operating rooms — like so much of its 1.2 million square feet of wards, laboratories and double-wide corridors — are full of intriguing possibilities and head-scratching questions. What would an operating room be good for, after all, besides surgery?
After years of stagnation and hand-wringing over what should become of the 100-year-old Art Deco monolith that towers over Boyle Heights, answers are beginning to take shape.
Los Angeles County, which owns the former hospital, has launched a multi-year program to reconfigure the H-shaped building into homeless and affordable housing. This will be the centerpiece of a “Healthy Village,” with as many as 1,400 units with beds for housing, and medical and mental health care. Spaces for social services, community activities, arts and retail will be spread over its spacious grounds.
Using state and local funds, the county has committed $250 million to take the first step, preparing the 19-story building for its remake. That alone will be a huge project: removing asbestos and other hazardous materials, upgrading electrical and water systems, installing air conditioning and fire sprinklers, restoring inoperative elevators and building seismic shear walls. The prep work is expected to start early next year and be finished by next summer.
And all that is to just get the building in shape as a blank slate for its
