Growth puts pressure on parking, roads
As Kalispell Regional Medical Center continues to evolve into a destination for health care, the road and parking system at the expanding medical complex has struggled to keep up with the growth.
Kalispell Planning and Building Director Tom Jentz said his office has begun to work with the medical center to form a long-term plan that helps the hospital’s infrastructure catch up to its expanded medical offerings.
“The medical community has grown faster than anyone expected — ask the hospital, city or the community,” Jentz said. “Kalispell is now on the map for our medical services. But as more buildings develop, opportunities for future parking, pedestrian access points, road options — well, they become more limited.”
The medical center’s Kalispell campus has grown to 3,300 employees. The campus is set to have 1,332 parking spaces after all current building projects are completed.
Jim Oliverson, vice president of Kalispell Regional, said KRMC has gradually added parking corresponding to its growth. But options for future expansion are getting tight, he said.
“Frankly, we’re running out of space for parking — we’re going to have to start building up instead of out,” Oliverson said. “But that’s extremely expensive, and when you compare spending millions on a parking garage to millions on diagnostic tools or treating people, the decision is clear.”
Soon after the hospital announced plans in June to build a 190,000-square-foot pediatric center, a $1 million parking lot expansion kicked off on the north side of campus.
While the project will add 308 parking spots, the new pediatric center will absorb 264 parking spaces. That leaves a net gain of 44 new spaces.
The pediatric center will be just the latest expansion at Kalispell Regional.
In 2013, Kalispell Regional built a three-story, 130,000-square-foot surgical wing. The following year, it began a 29,000-square-foot expansion of its emergency services department — growing from 8,000 to over 37,000 square feet.
Along with the new pediatric center, there are plans for a 30,000-square-foot expansion of the gastrointestinal facility.
Oliverson said he’s unsure how much hospital visits have grown with the expanded medical services.
He said due to the sporadic nature of illnesses and emergencies, patients aren’t all coming at once. They’re also not all arriving in individual vehicles.
According to hospital records, in the month of July, 2,452 patients visited the Kalispell emergency room. Roughly 20 percent of those patients were dropped off by emergency medical services, a law officer or a family member, Oliverson said.
Mellody Sharpton, the director of communications and marketing at Kalispell Regional, said while employees at the hospital far outnumber parking spots, fewer than half of those employees are on campus at once.
“They all are scattered because we run three shifts 24/7,” Sharpton said.
She said some of those employees are part time, home-health nurses or outreach nurses.
“We have incentives for employees to carpool and there’s a number of employees who ride their bike or walk to work,” Sharpton said. “We try to mitigate parking issues as much as we can.”
Margaret Davis, a homeowner on the outskirts of the hospital area, said as she has watched the hospital complex grow, there have been issues beyond parking.
“The parking situation is out of hand,” Davis said. “But this is bigger than the hospital. My concern is the public road system, the sidewalks and the bike paths are not serving Kalispell’s biggest private employer.”
Davis said there has been a lot of growth in her neighborhood, including health-care facilities, clinics and churches. And while those are positive contributions to the city, she said, people have to take back roads and private driveways to find the clinic or business they’re looking for, further clogging an already backed-up system.
“Buildings keep coming but without a way to safely get from one to the next,” she said. “As a homeowner, I’m concerned because I see lots of people walking along [U.S.] 93 in the ditch, I see kids crossing areas without crosswalks.”
Jentz said the planning department is still in the early stages of working with Kalispell Regional to develop an updated planning and development outline.
He said the medical system has expanded onto a foundation that initially wasn’t built with the idea of extreme traffic or pedestrians in mind.
The soon-to-come plan will include pedestrian routes, parking structures and coordinated signs to weave together a complex that has developed in pieces for years.
“The hospital has a great understanding of its future and what it wants to be for our community,” Jentz said. “It’s time we get together, to understand how that growth impacts surrounding areas, and work together to coordinate how to grow and expand.”
Reporter Katheryn Houghton may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at khoughton@dailyinterlake.com.