The Bellevue City Council on Monday unanimously approved policy and code changes necessary for Children’s Hospital to develop a new outpatient health care center near the city’s existing medical centers.

With the amendments to Bellevue’s comprehensive plan and land use code, Children’s will be allowed to move ahead with plans to construct a facility at 116th Avenue Northeast, just north of Northeast 12th Street.

Overlake Hospital Medical Center and Group Health Cooperative are just southwest of the site.

City officials said the Children’s property eventually would have been rezoned to allow construction of a medical facility as part of the ongoing Bel-Red Corridor planning initiative. That initiative is presently underway.

However, to accommodate Children’s construction schedule, city officials sought a separate change for the hospital.

Children’s has indicated to city officials that it plans to complete construction of its new facility by 2010. When it purchased the property in late 2007, the hospital said it planned to build a 50,000-square-foot ambulatory care facility to provide outpatient specialty services, urgent care and pediatric specialty offices to treat Eastside children closer to where they live.