Council pushes to get Trinity’s top floor occupied
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A dispute over building code has left the top floor of Trinity Health's hospital vacant since the medical complex opened on April 30, 2023.
The Minot City Council determined Monday, July 20, the situation needs to change, and if that means the council needs to do some prodding of Trinity and city staff, it will prod.
The matter came to the city council through proposed amendments to the International Building Code and International Fire Code. Council member Rob Fuller introduced Trinity's request to modify the definition of a high-rise building from 75 feet to 80 feet. Trinity's sixth floor is 78.5 feet above ground level.
According to city information, staff had warned Trinity officials since 2018 that its building design for the new hospital made the sixth floor ineligible for an occupancy permit. Once a building exceeds 75 feet, firefighters no longer can reliably perform rescue or fire suppression from the exterior, and certain interior safety features, which Trinity lacks, need to be in place to safely fight it from the interior. At particular issue has been the lack of stairwell pressurization to control smoke.
"Our firefighters rely on those pressurized stairwells to get into the building safely," Minot Fire Chief Kelli Kronschnabel said. "That's where the safe havens are. When you're not able to make it down the stairs, you need to go to the safe havens, which are the stairwells, and stay there until help arrives."
"I'm not a fan of changing building code," council member Mike Blessum said. "At the same time, I do think it's incumbent on the city to work with what we all would agree is one of our most important partners, to come to a solution that allows them to utilize the building that they built."
He encouraged supporting the proposed code change "not because it's the right way to approach it or to solve it, but because it pushes the agenda forward and makes sure that Trinity and the city come to an agreement that's going to be workable for both sides."
City Building Official Luke Tillema said Trinity met with him once since 2023, and at that meeting, he mentioned there are alternatives to a pressurized stairwell that he would entertain from Trinity.
"I have not seen anything yet to date," he said. "So, the proposals that have been rejected by the city have not been by me, and I am the authority for building permits and certificates."
Asked by Fuller why he never pursued Trinity for an alternative, Tillema responded he didn't feel it was his place to do so.
"Until they're ready, I'm not going to make them do something," he said.
Kronschnabel agreed the code includes multiple alternatives, but none has been offered by Trinity.
"We've gone to the table. We've talked about it, but we've never seen anything brought back to us," she said.
Christopher Van Gels, vice president of Facilities Management at Trinity, said hospitals can't just meet the minimum requirements of the International Building Code but must have multiple layers of fire and life safety built in.
He explained the systems the hospital has in place and the design for defending in place rather than trying to evacuate a vulnerable patient population. He noted an on-site review by the State Health Department of those systems.
"In their review, by qualified regulators, they did not see the need for us to have a smoke-proof enclosure for the stairwell, based on the fact that we have multiple layers of life safety integrated into this building," Van Gels said. "We have built a hospital that is very safe and continually has recurring testing and recurring regulatory requirements that we follow."
Council member Scott Samuelson sought to draw out how much discussion has occurred between Trinity and the city and why there's been no agreement.
"People that are involved in this need to sit down and discuss it," he said. "While voicing appreciation for Fuller bringing it to a head, he added, "It should have never come to this. Looking around here, I think everyone in this room is an adult, and I think the City of Minot has very good people that are adults, and I believe that Trinity has very good people that are adults. The right adults need to sit down and figure this out."
The council considered giving first reading to Fuller's motion to change the high-rise definition to 80 feet. Council members amended the motion, 5-2, to delay second reading and final passage of the ordinance until December, in hopes the two sides would settle by then and the proposed ordinance could be allowed to languish and die. They then killed the motion 3-4, on dissent from Mayor Mark Jantzer, Eric Locken, Stephan Podrygula and Samuelson.
Blessum asked Jantzer and council president Podrygula to step in and lead the fight to make sure productive talks between the city and Trinity happen. Both agreed to do so.
"It sounds like there are alternatives and there are ways to work through it," said Jantzer, who indicated he would work to facilitate that discussion.