To cheers and applause from a hard-hat-donning crowd on Davis Avenue, ironworkers on Tuesday set in place a final steel beam ”“ painted white and scrawled with signatures of hospital staff, contractors and supporters ”“ high atop the steel skeleton of a corner tower at White Plains Hospital.
The topping-off ceremony marked the completion of a major stage of a construction project that will add a six-story, 52,000-square-foot building at the center of a medical campus along East Post Road where a $100 million capital project has been underway since 2011 to renovate and expand the 292-bed, 121-year-old hospital. The hospital a year ago completed an $18 million first phase of the modernization project at its central building that included infrastructure upgrades and renovations to antiquated operating rooms.
The Westchester County Local Development Corp. a year ago issued $108 million in tax-exempt bonds to finance a two-year construction project. Ground was broken last November on the building addition, which is expected to be completed in the fall of 2015.
As a crane slowly lifted the ceremonial beam to its perch fronting East Post Road, crews were at work one block away on the site of what will be a 38,000-square-foot building adjacent to the hospital”™s Dickstein Cancer Treatment Center on Longview Avenue. The $20 million project, also expected to be completed next fall, will double the size of the hospital”™s cancer treatment program to approximately 70,000 square feet of space.
The central building addition will replace the hospital”™s demolished lobby with one designed with 25-foot glass walls and redesigned seating and reception areas for patients and visitors. It will include 24 new private patient rooms on three floors, five new operating rooms, a new labor and delivery suite, a lower-level central supply department and renovations and upgrades to 14,000 square feet of existing hospital space.
Among the beam”™s signers Tuesday were representatives of Perkins Eastman, the hospital”™s architect on the capital project, and Gilbane Building Co, the project construction manager.
“In the last year and a half, we”™ve seen a tremendous number of changes and growth at the hospital,” said White Plains Hospital CEO Jon Schandler, who will retire and turn over the CEO post to White Plains Hospital President Susan Fox next year. Schandler recalled arriving at the hospital 38 years ago to find lights dangling in the former lobby.
Adapting to changes in health care spurred by the Affordable Care Act, White Plains Hospital has agreed to partner with Montefiore Health System as the hub of the Bronx-based organization”™s growing health care network in Westchester County. The state health Department is expected this month to approve the partnership, which would legally make Montefiore the community hospital”™s “active parent” and co-operator.
