As a health care architect with more than 25 years of experience, I have been following the Boston Children’s Hospital clinical building approval process with great interest. I agree with Jack Connors (“Let Children’s Hospital expand,’’ Opinion, Oct. 18) that the hospital should be allowed to expand, but I am troubled by the project’s proposed remote location from the existing hospital’s clinical core.

The hospital is essentially building a new separate hospital of sorts, as well as investing in existing outdated buildings, thereby establishing an inflexible and inefficient overall functional flow. As a result, there are likely to be additional annual operating expenses, which are the real hidden costs of this project and have not been adequately addressed.

Let me suggest another way forward: Locate the new tower above the vehicular courtyard at the existing main entrance (cars would circulate under the new building). This approach would be an improvement for a number of reasons: simplified public-patient wayfinding by using the existing main entrance and creating a multistory atrium and central elevator bank; more efficient relationship between acute-care functions (horizontal and vertical connection to existing emergency care, imaging, surgery, and beds); and, as an added bonus, avoidance of Prouty Garden altogether, thereby preserving it.

David H. Deininger

Brookline