Samaritan Medical Center’s women’s health center project on Washington Street will not include 16 additional parking spaces that Councilman Mark C. Walczyk had pushed for on Monday night.
The councilman on Monday successfully lobbied his colleagues to put the 16 parking spots back into plans for the women’s health wellness center, 1575 Washington St., even though Samaritan Medical Center officials were fine that they were left out of the approved site plans back in May.
The city’s Code Enforcement scrapped the 16 parking spots from a new 45,150-square-foot parking lot at the Medical Center, so that a fire lane could adequately allow city fire department vehicles access to the wellness center in case of an emergency.
After conferring with Fire Chief Dale C. Herman, the city’s code office determined that the fire lane should be 30 feet wide, not the 24 feet that Samaritan had put into engineering plans. In May, hospital officials went along with the change, despite the loss of 16 parking spots.