Scranton City Council will host a public hearing this evening on Geisinger’s request for a zoning amendment related to its hospital expansion plans.
The amendment would allow Geisinger to build a five-story annex in the 400 block of Colfax Avenue across Mulberry Street from Geisinger Community Medical Center.
The hearing is at 5:45 p.m. in the council chambers at City Hall, 340 N. Washington Ave., with a regular council meeting scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m.
The matter is on council's regular meeting agenda and could be voted on this evening.
Besides traffic and aesthetic reasons, residents object to the rush for the zoning amendment. Doris Koloski, a Colfax resident whose home would be across from the annex, said neighbors aren’t trying to block Geisinger’s plans.
“There's no reason why they can't take more time, sit with the neighbors, work on an agreement acceptable to us and to them,” Koloski said. “Now, they're saying they don't need the 200 block (of Colfax) at all. They have no clue what they're going to do with it, but they still want the zoning and just for when they're ready to do something with it.”
The amendments' background
The amendments would change the zoning in two blocks from institutional to civic, which would change the building height limit to 100 feet from 45 feet.
The annex would sit on Colfax’s 400 block, also bounded by Mulberry and Vine streets and Okell Court. Geisinger wants the same civic zoning for the 200 block of Colfax, also bounded by Linden and Roselynn streets and Sherwood Court.
Gesinger, which has long needed to expand the hospital, spent more than $6.2 million buying up properties in the 200 and 400 blocks of Colfax since 2020. The health system spent even more money tearing down the homes they bought in both blocks.
Reversing history
In asking for the zoning amendment, Geisinger seeks to undo part of the revamped zoning ordinance the council adopted in May 2023.
At the time, Geisinger planned a taller parking garage in the 200 block of Colfax, a shorter one in the 400 block and tearing down existing garages and offices in the 300 block to expand the hospital.
System officials said the pre-amendment zoning ordinance “would have provided an opportunity to take a major step toward solving the region’s health care crisis.”
“Unfortunately, council’s amendment severely limits our ability to address the critical health care needs ... and we will now re-evaluate our options to determine the appropriate path forward,” Geisinger said in a statement.
The council decision pleased residents, but Geisinger spent much of the last two years trying to make its plans work within the height limits.
They're back with new plans
Only recently, system officials returned to the city with plans for a five-story, 75-feet-tall building that they presented at a Dec. 2 council meeting. A bridge over Mulberry would connect the current hospital and annex.
“It has been very clear to us from the beginning that 100 feet is not going to be tenable to our neighbors,” said Megan Brosious, Geisinger executive vice president and chief operations officer. “That message has been received loud and clear.”
The new building would include new inpatient beds, suites for medical procedures and maybe additional outpatient clinic space. A parking garage would sit next to that along Colfax. Brosious said the crisis over the fate of neighboring Regional Hospital of Scranton and Moses Taylor Hospital only heightens the need for Geisinger to expand. (Tenor Health Foundation has proposed buying Regional and Moses Taylor.)
Brosious said Geisinger hasn’t decided on what to do with the 200 block.
“I don't know. I want to have the opportunity to explore this traffic problem and think about what's the best way to flow things like the transport vehicles that are parking in front of ... neighbors’ houses right now, right?” she said. “The ambulances that are in queue waiting to come into the emergency room and are causing some traffic jams, right? There's a lot of congestion that happens around that hospital, between all of the emergency and transport vehicles, our deliveries. It’s not ideal, and I think that we need some time to really investigate that.”
Cognetti backs Geisinger's plan
Mayor Paige Cognetti supports the zoning amendments. She proposed them within a week of winning reelection, but also favored them two years ago.
"Now here we are, two-and-a-half years later with unfortunately, an increasingly tenuous healthcare situation here in Scranton, with us not knowing exactly what will happen with Regional Hospital," she said.
Cognetti said GCMC's overcrowded emergency room alone cries out for more space.
"They have requested that we give them more flexibility in what they do and what they invest," she said. "We've seen — since two-and-a-half years ago — when that initial proposal failed, that they've invested hundreds of millions of dollars down in Plains (Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center), and that's great, but Plains is quite far away from folks here in Lackawanna County. And in Scranton if there's a medical emergency, we want to make sure that we're doing everything we can as a city to help Geisinger expand and continue to provide that great healthcare right here in the city. And that's why I support this."
