New parking opens at Community Regional

Community Regional Medical Center continued its downtown expansion with the opening of a six-story parking garage on March 16.

The $23.1 million parking structure features 1,534 parking stalls –1,084 for Community employees and 450 for patients and tenants of the adjacent East Medical Plaza building still under construction. The East Medical Plaza is 88,000 square-feet of office and clinic space.

The new parking garage is located on Wayte Lane (formerly Thesta Street) between Illinois Avenue and Kashian Lane (formerly the portion of Divisadero Street extending onto the Community Regional campus).

Because many employees have shifted to the garage, it opens up four more parking lots on the 58-acre campus to hospital visitors and patients, with shuttle service to ferry visitors to the hospital from parking lots Monday through Friday between 5 a.m. and 8 p.m.

The opening of the garage also opens Wayte Lane up again to two-way traffic and includes an extra northbound turning lane for easy access to the garage. Left-hand turns into the garage are being discouraged to keep traffic flowing.

The new six-level garage limits access to those with Community employee or physician badges and features high-tech counters to let drivers know at the entrance how many spaces are available on each level.

Besides the parking and medical office buildings project, Community Regional is continuing construction of outpatient clinics at the far north end of its campus. The new 79,534-square-foot Deran Koligian Ambulatory Care Center is scheduled to open sometime after the new year and house services currently at Community Health Center-Cedar, the former University Medical Center.

This story was reported by Erin Kennedy. She can be reached at ekennedy@communitymedical.org.

Monday, March 16, 2009