General News: Cancer Center Approved by Planning Board
The new center will have an upper parking lot
and a lower parking lot.
December 04, 2007
St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital received a green light for a new cancer treatment center on Monday evening when its plans were approved unanimously by the Cornwall planning board.
The $15 million construction project will include a 2,000 square foot, two-story building that connects via a walkway to the main hospital on Laurel Avenue. It also will include expanded parking for an additional 91 cars.
The new treatment center will sit in front of the current structure and will provide radiation oncology and chemotherapy services on an out-patient basis.
During six months of review by the planning board, the hospital incorporated changes to accommodate public concerns about increased traffic – from both vehicles and helicopters – and to the presence of smokers who come to adjoining streets because smoking is prohibited on the hospital campus.
The hospital now intends to add an access road from the parking lot to Elm Street
and it designed a helipad in an area set back from residences. To address concerns about the mess left by smokers along Laurel Avenue, new cigarette receptacles have been added at the hospital entrances.
Before the vote, planning board member Ken Brodmerkel spoke in favor of the approval, saying that the hospital has been exemplary about things it was asked to do. “Have they done everything that the neighbors asked them to do? No. But they are property owners and they have certain rights,” Brodmekel said.
Board member Led Klotsky noted that he regrets the loss of green space in the area in front of the hospital and re-iterated his interest in the new building incorporating design elements to its second-floor windows that would match those in the existing hospital.
