Hartford HealthCare helps hearts in Norwalk

The former Lillian August outlet at 32 Knight St. in Norwalk is now a new Hartford HealthCare facility staffed by the organization’s heart health professionals.

Featuring 47,000 square feet of medical offices and support facilities, the $50 million project represents a major expansion of Hartford HealthCare’s offerings across Fairfield County, and joins several other facilities within Norwalk, including an urgent care facility in a former bank building a short drive down the Route 1 corridor.

“It’s very deliberate,” said Karen Goyette of the strategy behind the selection of sites for development. “It’s a thoughtful approach of taking what were previously spaces that were inefficient and not leading to the healing of our customers and being able to create spaces that offer more affordable care settings.”

Goyette, the executive vice president, chief strategy and transformation officer at Hartford HealthCare, emphasized that the new facilities were more than just an expansion for its own sake.

“It’s about really driving care to lower cost settings and creating access points where people are already living their everyday lives,” Goyette said.

Another aspect Goyette highlighted was that the facility is designed with practitioners in mind, taking their needs and requirements into account and creating spaces they will be happy to work in. This provides subtle benefits to patients in the form of smoother workflows during their appointments while helping attract top talent to Hartford HealthCare at a time when there is a shortage of doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals.

“The biggest piece is just the happiness of the providers,” Goyette said of the design philosophy. “They’re going to be in some cases coming from space they have been in for 20 years. So, we tried to really partner with them to design something they felt their patients can be comfortable with. We took all their experience and feedback and incorporated that into the waiting room space and how patients are greeted. We gave them the conduit to design that and put them into their ideal space.”

Goyette noted that the building is already in use. She indicated that between 60% and 70% of the facility is already occupied, primarily with members of the Heart and Vascular Institute.

Once at full capacity, Goyette said that Hartford HealthCare anticipates 20 full-time providers with technicians, receptionists, rehabilitation professionals and other support staff leading to roughly 100 jobs, with potential for more through possible future expansions.

Stanley Seligson, the chairman and president of Seligson Properties, expressed pride in the work that went in to transforming a retail location into a modern health care facility. He emphasized that the Knight Street project differed in its architectural details and the incorporation of historically significant features from the original building which set it apart from earlier projects.

“Hartford HealthCare is of course one of the largest and most important healthcare providers in the state of Connecticut,” Seligson said. “We’re teaming up to create what we hope will be a really important and magnificent healthcare building in Norwalk, the likes of which I don’t think have been seen in a long time.”

“We are in the final stages of leading an adaptive reuse of a single building which will become 30,000 square feet of medical care. In that building we have spent over $20 million in making that a first-class healthcare facility,” Seligson continued, noting that the finishing touches are expected sometime in the first or second quarter of 2024.