OBSERVER Photo by M.J. Stafford Brooks Memorial Hospital in Dunkirk, as seen Monday afternoon. The Fredonia Planning Board is set to consider and vote on a proposal to move the hospital to the village.

The Fredonia Planning Board is tentatively set to vote next week on an altered Brooks-TLC Hospital System proposal for an East Main Street facility, changed to include a second entrance on Route 60.

According to notices on the village website that were also sent to the OBSERVER, the board will meet Friday for “reviewing and discussing updated plans and information concerning the Brooks Memorial Hospital proposal in Fredonia. Public questions and comment will NOT be taken at this workshop session.”

On Wednesday, June 12, “Final discussions and an anticipated vote on the Brooks Memorial Hospital project will take place. Public questions and comment WILL be taken at this meeting.”

The effect of the hospital on traffic patterns in the area proved to be a big concern among both officials and residents when the project was first presented in February. The original plan contained only one entrance and exit, on East Main Street (also known as Route 20) not far from the Fredonia school district’s main entrance and exit.

Many in the community called for a second driveway to the new hospital leading from Route 60, and it appears they will get their wish.

“There is some good news regarding the second exit,” Fredonia Mayor Athanasia Landis said at Monday’s Board of Trustees session while announcing the Planning Board meetings. “I understand there is an agreement for a new exit on Route 60.”

The new hospital is slated to be approximately 100,000 square feet, with a 263-space parking lot surrounding it and a pad for helicopters. The two-story building will have outpatient services, including an emergency room, on the first floor and inpatient services on the second floor. There are supposed to be 29 beds — 21 for medical/surgical reasons, four for intensive care and four for maternity.

Brooks-TLC representatives have said they need to build a new hospital because the current one on Central Avenue in Dunkirk is antiquated and not competitive in the modern health care marketplace. They assert that renovations and expansion of the Dunkirk hospital, built in 1942 and expanded in 1962, would be too costly and impractical.

The current hospital has 65 beds. “Brooks has too many beds. On an average day, only 18 to 20 of the 65 beds at Brooks are occupied, which is less than 30%. Clearly there is excess capacity,” according to a April 15 commentary in the OBSERVER provided by Brooks-TLC officials.

A grassroots movement against the proposal, led by Dunkirk residents Frank Beach and Don Williams, drew around 80 people to a protest of the move in February and generated a petition signed by at least 3,000 people.

The plan for the Fredonia site, initially announced in January, comes after a Brooks-TLC commitment in 2018 to a parcel about a mile away on Route 20 in the town of Pomfret.

“When the announcement was made to build the hospital in the town of Pomfret, we never envisioned the delays that would unfold. In short, we lost a full year of planning and implementation,” wrote Chris Lanski, chairman of the Brooks-TLC board of directors, in a Feb. 10 OBSERVER commentary. “As a board, we have a fiduciary obligation to do what is in the best interest of the hospital, employees and the communities we serve. Therefore, we decided that we could not risk any further delays on the site. We chose to seek alternatives from the original list of sites, in the event that additional delays would occur, and the site in Fredonia was evaluated further.”