SCRANTON — A neighbor of Geisinger Community Medical Center sued the city to reverse its recent rezoning of property flanking the hospital to accommodate its expansion.
Tom Hoppel of 215 Arthur Ave. filed a zoning appeal lawsuit Tuesday in Lackawanna County Court challenging the city’s adoption last month of an ordinance rezoning Geisinger properties in the 200 and 400 blocks of Colfax Avenue flanking the current hospital facilities’ footprints. On Dec. 9, Scranton City Council voted 3-2 to pass Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti’s rezoning plan to accommodate Geisinger’s construction of a five-story building and parking garage in the 400 block of Colfax Avenue, across from the hospital.
The rezoning had come to the forefront over the prior month. Geisinger issued a news release Nov. 10, outlining how major investments in the Hill Section hospital undertaken during the past two years have maxed out space there, and noted Cognetti would pursue a rezoning to accommodate GCMC expansion across Mulberry Street. The issue revisited a zoning debate from 2023 that resulted in council at that time limiting the height of new buildings on GCMC’s Colfax properties to 45 feet, which stymied the hospital’s former expansion plans.
Raised anew in November and December, the issue again spurred concerns and questions from Hill Section and other city residents, and council members, as well as arguments in favor of the rezoning and expansion by GCMC, the mayor and others.
At a Dec. 2 council meeting, Geisinger told council of plans to construct a five-story, 75-foot-tall clinical building and parking garage in the 400 block of Colfax Avenue. A bridge over Mulberry Street would connect the “inpatient addition” on the site of the former John J. Audubon School to the existing hospital; a five-story garage with 400 parking spaces would go next to the addition, closer to Vine Street.
Rendering of a 75-foot-tall, five-story expansion building proposed by Geisinger Community Medical Center in Scranton, for the 400 block of Colfax Avenue, connected to the existing hospital by a bridge over Mulberry Street, and with a five-story parking garage on the Vine Street side of the Colfax block. IMAGE PROVIDED / COURTESY OF GEISINGER
The rezoning changed Geisinger-owned property on the odd side of the 200 block of Colfax Avenue and the even side of the 400 block of Colfax Avenue from institutional to civic zones. The institutional zone had the 45-foot height limit imposed by council in 2023, while a civic zone has a 100-foot limit. Geisinger officials said the health care system currently has no plans for the lot in the 200 block of Colfax. Residential concerns generally centered on giving neighbors more time to participate in an expansion they fear could harm the neighborhood already stressed by the hospital’s presence and traffic, and giving them more input and safeguards to ensure Geisinger sticks to its concept and it does not sprawl even bigger.
A map showing existing zoning in the area of Geisinger Community Medical Center in Scranton, and proposed changes to Geisinger-owned properties in the 200 and 400 blocks of Colfax Avenue. (IMAGE POSTED IN SCRANTON CITY COUNCIL AGENDA)
Council held a public hearing Dec. 9 on the rezoning that featured numerous speakers generally restating arguments and concerns on both sides of the rezoning and GCMC expansion issue. At that time, Hoppel spoke of the rezoning as getting rushed through before a new council with a different composition of members would take over in January, according to an Electric City Television simulcast and video of the hearing posted online. He said the neighborhood did not have enough notice of the impending rezoning and a “shoehorned” expansion without any impact studies would negatively impact neighbors.
“There’s also no plan for the 200 block of Colfax — absolutely no plan. We don’t know what the impact of this situation will be on our living situation,” Hoppel told council. “I just think that if this being forced through so that you guys could vote on this (before a new council takes over), I think that’s extremely unfair. We needed more time” to review it.
Scranton resident Tom Hoppel speaking during a Dec. 9, 2025 public hearing by Scranton City Council on a rezoning of properties flanking Geisinger Community Medical Center that would accommodate hospital expansion. A neighbor of the hospital, Hoppel raised various concerns. (IMAGE COPIED FROM ELECTRIC CITY TELEVISION VIDEO ON YOUTUBE)
Hoppel is represented in the appeal by attorney Edmund Scacchitti, a resident of the 400 block of Arthur Avenue. Scacchitti previously raised similar concerns to council and in an injunction lawsuit that unsuccessfully sought to push off the rezoning into 2026 to give residents and a new council more time for review. Lackawanna County President Judge James Gibbons on Dec. 9 ruled he did not have jurisdiction to prevent a legislative act of the council, and the legal remedy for an aggrieved party to challenge such an action would come afterward via a court appeal.
That paved the way for council to vote later that night on the rezoning. In a 3-2 decision, former council President Gerald Smurl, former Councilman Bill King and Jessica Rothchild voted yes for the rezoning, while Mark McAndrew and Tom Schuster voted no. The tenures of Smurl and King on council ended Monday. They were succeeded on council by Patrick Flynn and Sean McAndrew.
As the appellant in this zoning challenge, Hoppel names the city as the appellee defendant. Geisinger is not named as a defendant. Hospital spokesman Matt Mattei said Geisinger declined to comment on Hoppel’s zoning appeal because the hospital system is not a defendant.
Some of the appeal’s claims include: the city violated due process via inadequate posting of a public notice, which amounts to a fatal flaw of the rezoning ordinance; the rezoning was arbitrary and unreasonable; and the rezoning constitutes “spot zoning” by creating a GCMC “zoned island” that is totally incompatible with a well-established residential neighborhood of 18 square blocks of housing.
The city has not yet formally responded in court to Hoppel’s zoning appeal. City Solicitor Jessica Eskra said Thursday, “The city intends to vigorously defend against the allegations raised in this case. We will reserve any further comments for the courtroom.”