A plan by the Deer Park School District to use a portion of the Deer Park Hospital for its pre-school ECEAP program has uncovered problems about acceptable uses in the now-vacant facility.

Deer Park’s Director of Community Services Roger Krieger said the site is currently zoned hospital, which basically limits uses for the 50-year-old building to medical operations.

Krieger said the medical zoning could allow for such activities as daycare as a secondary use. But with the hospital no longer in operation, any such operation would be a primary use, making it unacceptable.

City officials do not see any way the zoning could be changed because of the nearby Deer Park Family Clinic.
Originally, the hospital site was zoned as residential, but was changed to hospital after the clinic was built more than a decade ago.

Krieger said it is impossible for the site to split its zoning designation with the clinic keeping the hospital zone and the hospital getting a new designation.

Planning Commission Chair Dan Berg is scheduled to meet with Providence Health Services and clinic officials to explain the zoning situation.

Deer Park School District Superintendent Mick Miller said the need to find a new home for the ECEAP program was in response to the surge in school enrollment at the Deer Park Elementary School and the expansion of the state pre-school program.

School district officials have added a sixth kindergarten and a sixth first grade class at DPES for the next school year. In addition, the state has expanded Deer Park’s ECEAP program from 48 to 69 youngsters.

Miller, who is confident that the zoning roadblocks at the hospital can be overcome, will move the ECEAP program into a portable classroom if no other options exist.