Board holds wide‑ranging hearing on CPMC rebuild; city, hospital remain in active negotiations

San Francisco officials on Tuesday held an extended committee‑of‑the‑whole hearing to review the status of negotiations between city agencies and California Pacific Medical Center over CPMC’s long‑range development plan, a multi‑campus rebuild and consolidation project. The public hearing drew neighborhood groups, physicians, unions and hundreds of residents to the board chambers and overflow rooms to press competing demands for charity care, neighborhood mitigation, housing and local hiring.

City negotiators described an agreement framework they are still refining with CPMC. Staff from the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, Planning, the Department of Public Health (DPH), the mayor’s housing office and the Municipal Transportation Agency gave detailed presentations about the proposals under discussion and the remaining open items.

The project CPMC seeks to build would, as the hospital group has proposed, consolidate many acute services in a new 15‑story, 555‑bed hospital on Cathedral Hill (Van Ness/Geary), add an 80‑bed replacement hospital at the St. Luke’s campus and build a 4‑story neuroscience/medical office building at the Davies campus. City staff emphasized that the development agreement (DA) — a binding contract between the city and CPMC — is the principal tool the board will use to secure enforceable community benefits, mitigation and compliance obligations if the project is approved.

City health and planning staff described the health‑care provisions under active negotiation. Key elements the mayor’s office and the Department of Public Health said they are seeking include:

• Commitments to serve low‑income patients: City officials said they are negotiating a target for CPMC to “bring into” the Medi‑Cal managed‑care system a defined number of newly eligible Medi‑Cal beneficiaries (DPH staff described a working figure of about 10,000 Medi‑Cal lives as the target the agreement should cover) and to make annual grants to community clinics serving neighborhoods near Cathedral Hill (including the Tenderloin). Staff said the DA would also preserve an ongoing baseline level of charity care and other benefits based on CPMC’s recent years of spending, adjusted for…