Peninsula Health Care District’s CEO Cheryl Fama to retire

“I felt like it’s the right time to leave,” Fama said. “I live near the project so I will still be very much involved.”

After a pandemic, housing crisis and multiple plans that fell through, the project faced plenty of hurdles but Fama said the district has a good group of people working on it who can carry on without her guidance. Fama said her legacy is carrying out the board’s 2007 strategic plan, which set a course for moving from a hospital-focused organization to a community-focused health care organization.

Lawrence Cappel, chair of the Peninsula Health Care District Board of Trustees, said Fama has a talent for connecting with people.

“I’ve known her for a long time, she is one of the smartest people I know,” Cappel said.

Fama spearheaded projects like The Trousdale, an assisted living facility, Sonrisas Dental Clinic and more than 40 grants programs for the community and has led the initiative on the Peninsula Wellness Community, he added.

“She leaves us with a path of innovation and it’s our task for the board, the community and whoever proceeds to carry it forward,” Cappel said.

The Peninsula Wellness Community is set to transform 6.2 acres of the district’s property, on Trousdale Drive in Burlingame, into 377 senior homes, 175 units listed at affordable rates and 202 units listed at market-rate. It will also include a community center, a yoga area, raised bed garden, meditation garden, outdoor gathering area, exercise loop with senior friendly services, a grand lawn area and a health care hub with physical fitness facilities integrated with the seniors’ medical records, which Cappel said will revolutionize the senior health care industry for the future.

One of the bigger issues was determining the best use of the land that remained vacant when the hospital was demolished, Fama said. A portion of that land is positioned on top of the Hetch Hetchy pipeline, which can’t be built over, so the district planned for walkways and paseos.

Cappel said as people get older, socialization is important to one’s health and the walkways are meant to integrate the rest of the community with the senior housing so it doesn’t feel isolated and can be an inclusive outdoor area for people of all ages to enjoy.

When the district decided to build the senior community hub, Fama said it was the right thing to do because previous studies indicated the population among the county was aging. It’s the district’s responsibility to serve the community with the money it accrued over the years, she added.

“The average age of residents 65 and older is around 17% of the population [in the county] and the district is aware of the aging population and plans to address those needs,” Fama said. “The silver tsunami was going to hit the county and as the population in the county was going to age, we were there on the low land and right there next to the hospital, so we knew we wanted to do something to help serve the aging population.”

The district has $20.9 million, according to the state Controller’s Office. Before purchasing property, it had amassed around $50 million in reserves derived from taxes it collects to serve health needs of residents in San Bruno, Millbrae, Burlingame, Hillsborough, San Mateo and Foster City.

The district wants to be responsible in how they are good stewards with the money, Fama said.

How it started

The health care district was formed in 1947 and by 1950 it bought 26 acres of land, in Burlingame, in between Ray Park, Trousdale Drive, Marco Polo Way and El Camino Real. Peninsula Hospital opened in 1954 and at the time was a state-of-the-art facility. Fifty years later, the outdated building was in need of seismic retrofitting. Before that, Peninsula and Mills hospitals merged in the 1980s and, by 1994, became the Peninsula Health Care District. In 2011, Sutter Health built a new hospital leasing the land from the district for 50 years but left the district with 6.2 acres of property with which to work.

Fama started in 2009 as the district’s director and said the focus was on a community hub, services and housing.

“That was kind of our marching orders,” said Fama, who added that by law the district could only build housing for employees or seniors.

After numerous studies, interviews and community outreach, the district wanted a community hub but had a few obstacles in its way. It attempted to buy the Burlingame School District offices on Trousdale Drive and Community Gatepath, now Ability Path, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting people with disabilities, on Marco Polo Way. Both declined, leaving the health care district with 6.2 acres instead of the 8 acres.

The original plan was to develop market-rate housing and the developer offered 10% to be affordable. Affordable units were not required when the PWC plans were developed and Fama said feedback was positive when the plan was unveiled.

“Clearly, the housing crisis was escalating and the PWC project became a focus given it would be occurring on public land,” Fama said.

The district began its discussions with MidPen Housing, a nonprofit affordable housing developer, around mid-2018, Fama said.

After a letter sent in 2019 from the offices of the former U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, former state Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, and former Assemblyman Kevin Mullin, D-South San Francisco, urged health officials to reserve a portion of the development for below-market-rate housing.

“Once the Jackie Speier letter came around it stimulated that process that we needed to take that out of our back pocket,” Cappel said. “I wouldn’t have allowed the project to go forward if we didn’t integrate an affordable housing component. It is just the logical and the right thing to do for public land.”

By November 2019, the PHCD Board approved MidPen as a part of the developer team and approved a revised concept plan, PWC 2.0, that included 184 affordable housing units, or 39% of the planned senior housing units to include “all levels of affordability,” Fama said in an email.

“We did listen to the public, the board and the developer said we need to do more affordable housing so we brought in MidPen and now it’s [the project] 46% affordable housing and we are really proud of that,” Fama said.

The details with the affordable housing aspect became very complicated, she added. Then the pandemic slowed everything down even more.

“Financing opportunities for developers, public meetings before Zoom, lumber and costs of everything skyrocketed, so that added time,” Fama said. “But we kept slugging through.”

What’s next?

After some building height hiccups with the hospital’s helicopter flight path, the project is under its third revision and in the beginning stages of the city approval process. Construction is anticipated to begin in 2025 and be completed 2027.

“So, this has been a project in evolution but I am proud to say that this just evolved and we’re stubborn and we’re going to do it no matter what, we really did continue to keep our finger on the pulse of needs,” Fama said.

The biggest future challenge, Fama said, is finding needed health care workforce and the rising cost of living, which affects staff retention.

Cappel said the biggest challenge will be finding someone qualified to fill Fama’s shoes, adding they are in the recruitment process now. He said the next steps for the development is getting full entitlement for the city, a back-and-forth process.

“We are about to go forward with the design, I think it’s an external review that comes next. And then negotiating with the developers, where the components for the hub will be very important,” Cappel said. “But I think it will be around five more years before we actually break ground.”