Elizabeth Seton Pediatric Center held a groundbreaking ceremony on Nov. 11 for a $24 million building expansion that will add 32 beds for ventilator-dependent children to the residential care center in Yonkers.
The three-story, 26,000-square-foot building addition at 300 Corporate Boulevard South is expected to open by the first quarter of 2017, according to a spokesperson. The project also includes renovations to about 8,600 square feet of space in the existing building that opened in 2012.
When the project is completed, the long-term nursing facility”™s resident population will increase from 137 children with complex medical needs to 169. Seton officials plan to hire an additional 109 employees with the expansion.
Before its move from Manhattan to Yonkers, Elizabeth Seton Pediatric Center in 2006 became the first facility in New York to start a long-term ventilator care program for the state”™s growing population of medically complex children, a Seton spokesperson said. Opening its new 165,000-square-foot facility in Yonkers, the center expanded its capacity for ventilator-dependent residents from four children to 18.
Yet its waiting list of ventilator-dependent children has grown in the last three years. Many of those children now reside in facilities in New Jersey and other neighboring states, and Seton officials said their goal is to bring them closer to their families in New York.
The expansion will allow the center to care for 50 ventilator-dependent children and make the Yonkers facility the largest provider of pediatric ventilator care in the state, a spokesperson said.
The expansion project is the focus of the Hummingbird Campaign, a $6 million fundraising initiative of the St. Elizabeth Seton Children”™s Foundation.
