Dearborn Council Rescinds Smoking Ban at Oakwood Hospital

In response to complaints from neighbors living near Oakwood Hospital, the Dearborn City Council revoked an ordinance that bans smoking within 100 feet of a hospital building at its meeting on Tuesday.

The change will allow smokers to again congregate on the sidewalk in front of the hospital, located at 18101 Oakwood Blvd.

"This particular ordinance will revert back to how it was eight to 10 months ago," council president Tom Tafelski said. "We did something to help Oakwood Hospital initiate a tobacco-free zone, however there was an issue with smokers entering the neighborhood near the Oakwood/Snow area."

The Oakwood campus itself has been smoke-free since 2007, and the council added the area around the hospital to the ordinance in January. As a result, employees were walking to the 100-foot boundary across Oakwood Boulevard to St. Martha Catholic Church and into the neighborhoods to smoke, Tafelski said.

Residents have complained numerous times to the council since last December about the smokers loitering on private property, and in February the council held a study session to address the issue.

"We've been working some things out with Oakwood. We believe they will have a designated smoking area on the facility, but to free up the chaos in the neighborhood, we're rescinding the ordinance, and hopefully sometime soon we'll be able to reinstate it."

Morris Cotton, the hospital’s director of security, said the hospital is currently planning to build a smoking shelter on the top level of the hospital's parking deck.

Cotton said originally the hospital planned to build a smoking facility on the St. Martha Church property, which Oakwood Healthcare System recently purchased, however he said allowing employees to repeatedly cross a busy street to smoke is a liability issue for the hospital.

Cotton said he was not sure when the smoking shelter would be constructed.