Construction has begun on the 13,500-square-foot Ronald McDonald House of the Greater Hudson Valley at Maria Fareri Children”™s Hospital in Valhalla.
On the grounds of Westchester Medical Center, the freestanding facility operated by Ronald McDonald House Charities will provide accommodations for the families of children being treated at the hospital in the neonatal and pediatric intensive care units.
Accommodations were originally provided through the in-hospital Ronald McDonald Family Room, said Marielena DiMatteo, executive director of Ronald McDonald House of the Greater Hudson Valley.
“By the winter of 2005, we were fully operational and very shortly thereafter, the demand escalated for the use of the existing Ronald McDonald facility in the hospital and ever since then, it has outstripped its capacity,” said Dr. Michael Gewitz, physician-in-chief at Maria Fareri and professor and vice chairman of pediatrics at New York Medical College.
Gewitz said the children”™s hospital “generally runs in excess of 90 percent occupancy year round” and is often fully occupied.
About 50 percent of patients served are from Westchester County, Gewitz said, and the other half come from the Hudson Valley and Fairfield County in Connecticut.
Estimated construction costs of the 12-bedroom “house” are $5.5 million and interior furnishings will be provided by White Plains-based Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc.
The design will echo the look of a Sheraton Four Points hotel.
Patrons of the Ronald McDonald House of the Greater Hudson Valley will be charged on a “sliding scale,” Gewitz said, and “can be as low as $10 or less.”
The hospital will also begin construction this summer on a “neighborhood” or hospital unit, which will add nine beds for in-patient use at the hospital.
“Just by having these nine beds, we estimate that close to 500 extra children will be able to be handled during the course of a year,” Gewitz said. “We had a strategic plan that with the neighborhood and addition of beds, our plans are to continue over the next several years to increase our capacity for the demands we have.”
Estimated construction costs are $9.5 million.
“The approval process required us to have most of the funding issues secured,” Gewitz said in response to the 8 percent to 10 percent drop in revenue at Westchester Medical Center reported by the Business Journal last June. “These (projects) have been organized and developed for a long time, although we still have fundraising to do. We”™re about to start testing the fundraising capacity in the community given the new economic climate, but we already have the large portion of funds secured.”
Operationally speaking, the Ronald McDonald House of the Greater Hudson Valley raises its own money through community efforts and through the charity, DiMatteo said.
There are some 300 Ronald McDonald houses nationwide, she said.
Swanke Hayden Connell Architects in New York is the architect of record for both projects.
The estimated completion date of the Ronald McDonald House of the Greater Hudson Valley is late fall 2010 and the in-patient neighborhood, spring 2011.
