Community, Hayward Upward

Demolition of closed Kaiser hospital to begin

February 13, 2018

Kaiser Building

Photo by Paul Kuroda, East Bay Times

Kaiser Permanente says it will begin late next month the planned demolition of its closed four-story South Hayward hospital, adjoining two-story medical office building and pedestrian bridge over Tennyson Avenue.

Representatives for the healthcare provider and general contractor Swinerton Builders are scheduled to host a community meeting to provide neighbors an overview of the phases of demolition. The meeting is planned next Tuesday, Feb. 20, from 6:30 to 8 p.m., at the Kaiser Medical Office Building, 27303 Sleepy Hollow Avenue.

The hospital and medical offices demolition is expected to take several months to complete. Exterior demolition work is scheduled to begin in late March and occur between 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., weekdays. The pedestrian bridge will be taken down in a single day, between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., tentatively scheduled for a Saturday in June. On that day, Tennyson Road, between Hesperian Boulevard and Sleepy Hollow Avenue, will be closed to vehicle and pedestrian traffic from 6 a.m. to 11:30 p.m.

Built in 1965, Kaiser’s South Hayward hospital served the community for nearly 50 years. In 2014, Kaiser Permanente opened a replacement medical center at 2500 Merced Street in San Leandro to replace the South Hayward hospital, which did not meet state-mandated seismic requirements. The South Hayward property would not have allowed for development of a hospital large enough and with capacity to meet growing service demands and to accommodate medical technology advancement for decades to come, according to Kaiser.

Kaiser continues to provide a wide range of medical services in South Hayward at the Sleepy Hollow medical office building, including urgent care, pediatrics, a teen clinic, pharmacy, laboratory and radiology services, and peritoneal dialysis and urology.