D.C. mental health officials are seeking to begin building by the end of the year a $134 million, 292-bed psychiatric hospital to replace the historic but crumbling St. Elizabeths Hospital in Southeast.
“This has been a long, long time in coming,” said Martha Knisley, director of the D.C. Department of Mental Health. “We’re bringing mental health services in D.C. into the modern age.”
The D.C. State Health Planning and Development Agency has scheduled a public hearing on the project for Wednesday.
Mental health officials they need a new hospital because the current facilities on the sprawling Civil War-era campus are too costly to maintain.
“The buildings had been deteriorating to the point to where we have no choice,” Miss Knisley said.
D.C. Council Chairman Linda W. Cropp, at-large Democrat, said she favors the project.
“It’s been a proposal for several years and it’s something that is needed,” Mrs. Cropp said. “That facility needs to be replaced and I’m supportive of it.”
Founded in 1855, St. Elizabeths was the federal government’s first hospital for the mentally ill. But over the decades its vacated buildings fell into disrepair as patient levels dropped from 7,000 in the 1940s to about 600 today.
The federal government transferred hospital operations to the city in 1987.
The District’s mental health agency still needs zoning approval and a certificate of need from the Health Planning and Development Agency to move ahead with the project. But Miss Knisley said officials hope to begin construction by the end of the year.
The hospital campus, at 2700 Martin Luther King Ave. SE, comprises more than 144 buildings on more than 300 acres.
St. Elizabeths Hospital operates 565 beds, though project plans call for 292 beds for the new hospital. Miss Knisley said officials will maintain more than 200 beds in older buildings on the campus.
“That would enable us to serve up to 500 patients,” she said. “We will always make space for people who need the care.”
The oldest buildings on the western half of the St. Elizabeths campus — which is under federal control — would not be razed under the proposal, but city officials are planning to demolish at least three buildings, including the John Howard Pavilion.
The pavilion, which was built in the 1950s, houses John Hinckley Jr., who shot President Reagan in 1981. The new hospital would be built in the
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