Stamford Hospital to occupy Long Ridge Road site

BY RICHARD LEE
Hearst Connecticut Media

Stamford Hospital”™s management is not stopping with the $450 million construction of a new medical facility to replace its main building on Shelburne Road. The hospital has signed a lease to move affiliated physicians from offices throughout the region to 292 Long Ridge Road.

The lease with Building and Land Technology will allow the hospital to better integrate and create a patient-centered care facility, according to Dr. Rod Acosta, who was appointed CEO of Stamford Hospital Integrated Practices this month.

“We expect to move in the fall of 2015,” he said, expecting 25 doctors to be located in the 46,000-square-foot building. “Work is going on now.”

The building, formerly owned by Fairfield-based General Electric, will house doctors focusing on primary care, cardiology, endocrinology, neurology, obstetrics, gynecology and orthopedics, as well as diagnostic imaging labs and a walk-in center.

“It will be excellent for our physicians and most important ”“ better care for our patients. We”™re hiring physicians,” said Acosta, who previously was medical staff chairman at Stamford Hospital, which he joined in 1987 as attending physician in the Department of Family Medicine.

In 1995, he was a founding member and partner of Stamford Family Practice, which was the first primary care group to join Stamford Hospital Integrated Practices in 2010.

The new space will accommodate physicians who do not need to be at the main facility on a regular basis, said Acosta, who will serve as Stamford Health Integrated Practices”™ leader within Stamford Health System, directing quality, strategy and growth initiatives related to employed physicians and enhancing collaboration between the system and medical staff.

“There was a long search for buildings to fit our purpose,” Acosta said.

Stamford Health Integrated Practices was created as a partnership of local primary care physicians, health care specialists and Stamford Hospital to coordinate and deliver care in the Fairfield County and Westchester County communities as health care evolves.

Tim Rorick, a managing director for the Greenwich office of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, represented the hospital in its search.

“It”™s the only 46,000-square-foot building that has five parking spaces per thousand square feet of space in the city,” he said.

Medical office uses require more parking spaces than general office use.

Building and Land Technology acquired controlling interest in 292 Long Ridge Road and the neighboring 260 Long Ridge Road in 2007.

Hearst Connecticut Media includes four daily newspapers: Connecticut Post, Greenwich Time, The Advocate (Stamford) and The News Times (Danbury). See stamfordadvocate.com for more from this reporter.