O’side OKS Tri-City mental health hospital

Workers are expected to break ground on a new mental health hospital on the campus of Tri-City Medical Center in August or September with the recent approval of the project by the Oceanside Planning Commission.

The panel voted 5-0 on June 13 to issue the project a conditional use permit after receiving a presentation on the 14,400-square-foot, single-story building’s design. Initial drawings have been modified, deleting an emergency access driveway that would have connected the property to nearby Waring Road.

That connection, public speakers said, was not favored by many residents living in the surrounding neighborhood.

Foot traffic arriving at and leaving the facility was the other major concern, and Dr. Luke Bergmann, director of the county’s behavioral health program. The 16-bed locked unit will receive patients directly from area crisis stabilization units and hospital emergency rooms. “There will be no sort of organic human traffic like we would associate with an outpatient service,” Bergmann said.

Likewise, patients discharged after receiving treatment would generally be transported to residential facilities, not simply released into the surrounding neighborhood. “As they don’t just walk up, they will not just walk out,” Bergmann said.

Estimated to cost $20 million, the facility replaces TriCity’s existing behavioral health unit, which the hospital closed in 2018 citing prohibitively expensive government mandated renovations to reduce hanging risks. Tri-City will operate the new facility, built on the far northwestern corner of its Oceanside campus.

Bergmann said that designers took care to make the new facility as pleasant as possible, with landscaping and internal features designed to avoid an institutional feel.

“We need an infrastructure that ref lects the fact that we value people with behavioral health conditions and that we place importance on their getting better,” Bergmann said.

The anticipated construction timeline is short, with completion estimated on an as-yet-unspecified date in 2023.