Salina, Kan., City Commission Votes to Allow Red Cross Blood Platelet Center
By Darrin Stineman, The Salina Journal, Kan.
Feb. 22–It appears Salina’s zoning ordinances will not have to be amended to allow for a Red Cross blood platelet center to be built at 120 W. Prescott.
Salina Regional Health Foundation, which is building the center, first had to receive city approval to demolish a 95-year-old house in one of the city’s historic districts. It got that OK when the Salina City Commission voted 4-1 on Nov. 7 to overrule a Salina Planning Commission decision to deny an application for a demolition permit.
The matter then became a zoning issue, because the lot is zoned R-3 (multi-family residential), and a list of approved building uses in R-3 doesn’t include medical facilities.
It does include “professional offices,” but Dean Andrew, director of planning for the city of Salina, said in November that he didn’t think that definition could be stretched to fit the platelet center.
He has since changed his mind, after working with the health foundation on its application for a conditional use permit to build the center. The matter will go before the Salina Planning Commission at 4 p.m. today at the City-County Building.
“I put the burden on them to show it was not a medical clinic,” Andrew said on Tuesday. “They were able to do that by providing some additional information about the floor plan and how the space would be used.
“There’s not physician offices there, and there are no exam rooms or treatment rooms or medical testing equipment or anything that you would have at a medical clinic that are parking and traffic-generators. As it’s proposed and as it would operate, it would not fit within the traditional parameters of a medical clinic.”
What it’s like inside Red Cross officials said the Salina facility won’t necessarily have an interior similar to the one in Wichita, but the one there “is a lot less clinical than a doctor’s office,” said David Young, who is in charge of recruiting platelet donors at the Wichita facility.
Those who come to donate in Wichita typically go to a reception desk to receive information that must be read and signed, Young said.
There is a waiting area for them to prepare the information, he said, and then they’re called to a “health history booth” to fill out more paperwork.
After that, they go to a separate donor area and then to a canteen area where they are encouraged to replace lost fluids, Young said.
There was little doubt Four of the five Salina city commissioners expressed support for the platelet center to move forward when the demolition permit issue came before them, leaving little doubt that the zoning problem could be worked out.
In fact, at that city commission meeting, Commissioner Abner Perney made a motion to amend the zoning ordinance to include platelet centers, and Commissioner Donnie Marrs seconded it. But City Manager Jason Gage intervened and said city ordinance requires that before the city commission could take that type of action, it would have to be in response to a request.
An amendment won’t be necessary if the planning commission goes along with the current request to allow the platelet center to fall under the office use outlined in the city’s R-3 zoning regulations.
Salina Regional Health Foundation seeks to build the facility on behalf of the Red Cross, which will operate it. The blood-platelet center would be one of only a few in Kansas and would allow Salina-area platelet donors to give without having to travel to Wichita.
Blood platelets are especially useful in heart surgeries and cancer treatment, and the center would be within a block of both Salina Regional Health Center and the Tammy Walker Cancer Center.
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