Nearly three years after construction began, Connecticut Children’s Thursday marked the opening of a $326 million clinical tower that will double the size of its flagship Hartford campus — the largest expansion in its 29-year history — allowing the hospital to push deeply into fetal care from its traditional pediatric care roots.
The eight-story tower houses a fetal care center — already launched by the hospital — that will provide care to expectant mothers whose babies may need surgery before they are born. The center includes six private rooms, a private elevator for the mothers, and a massive operating room that can accommodate up to 40 clinicians at one time because both the unborn child and the mother are involved in the surgery.
In addition, there are two floors with 50 private, neonatal intensive care rooms, giving parents privacy and place to sleep and shower with their newborns nearby.
“This tower is the future of pediatric health care in motion,” Bob Duncan, the hospital’s chief operating officer, said during a grand opening ceremony. “Every single space, every detail was designed with the child and their families in mind. From the light-filled, beautiful atrium to ‘flying submarine’ elevators where anxiety gives way to imagination. This is a place where healing feels less intimidating and more hopeful.”
Duncan said the hospital is now equipped to provide some of the most advanced health care in the country.
Each of the upper floors of the 195,000-square-foot tower has distinctive features such as outdoor terraces and indoor lounges where families of babies in the NICU can gather, share experiences and support each other. A skywalk across Washington Street connects to a $72 million, 900-space parking garage, an amenity that is expected to open Jan. 12. An outdoor garden off the fifth floor includes a Zen garden for meditation.
The project was overseen by James E. Shmerling, the hospital’s president and chief executive, who is retiring at the end of the year. His successor, Shannon Sullivan, who most recently held the post of president and chief operating officer at Women & Infants Hospital in Providence, RI, will assume the post Jan. 12.
Sullivan, who grew up in Longmeadow, MA, attended Thursday’s ceremonies and said, after the ceremony: “It’s an incredible building but more importantly, it’s incredible team members, the ones I’ve met who are in the building taking care of patients. We’re only as good as the people. So, I’m really excited to come here right now.”
Sullivan said, “We’ve got a lot of very positive, forward momentum, but there’s a lot of challenges as it relates right now to what is happening in health care across the entire country. So we’ve got to take those head on, and that’s what we’re going to plan to do.”
Among those challenges are expected, wide-ranging cuts to Medicaid, Sullivan said, and that has implications for child health care.
“We’re going to have to think creatively about how we provide that care in lots of different ways,” Sullivan said. “We’re going to be committed, doing it no matter how creatively we do it. We’re going to do it.”
When it came time to cut a ceremonial ribbon, scissors were handed to Gov. Ned Lamont, Hartford Mayor Arunan Arulampalam and other officials but one also went to 6-year-old Teimo Costa Jr.
Teimo Costa Jr., nicknamed “Junior,” was a patient in the hospital’s NICU unit, which, until now, was at neighboring Hartford Hospital. Junior was born at 27 weeks, weighing just 2 pounds, 7 ounces. He required, among other procedures, surgery to correct a condition that prevented his heart from pumping as it should. Junior was in the NICU for 100 days.
His parents, Jesse and Teimo Costa of West Hartford and sister, Alessia, 9, also stood by as the cut ribbon floated to the ground.
Jesse Costa said the private NICU rooms will be “life-changing for parents, honestly.”
“You get to be alone with your family during difficult or emotional moments,” Jesse Teimo said. “We shared a quad, and while I was concerned about my own child, I had to experience other parents’ moments as well, which can be traumatizing. Just giving parents a little bit of sense of normalcy. Just having your own private bathroom in there, your sink. They now have a couch in there for an overnight option. We didn’t have that.”
The expansion is a key component in the evolution of the city’s Washington Street corridor near the contiguous campuses of Connecticut Children’s and Hartford Hospital. The area is seen as a health and innovation district, one of 10 projects that could transform Hartford by 2035, the city’s 400th anniversary.
The expansion also has the potential to raise Connecticut Children’s profile both regionally and nationally — and create hundreds of jobs.
The hospital is already drawing increased attention.
In October, entrepreneur and philanthropist Tom Golisano announced that Connecticut Children’s will join the newly formed Golisano Children’s Alliance with a $50 million investment in the Hartford center.
Golisano, the founder of Paychex, Inc., has donated more than a $1 billion to organizations that support health care, education and inclusion. Connecticut Children’s is one of 10 hospitals to join the Golisano Children’s Alliance, which will operate collaboratively but independently.
While the surrounding Frog Hollow neighborhood supported the development of the tower, the plans for the parking garage were controversial and required negotiations with Connecticut Children’s. The hospital agreed to relocate rather than demolish four structures — three of them historic — to make way for the parking garage. J Restaurant Bar also closed.
The hospital also agreed to plant 100 trees, a number matched by the city.
The relocated buildings saved nine apartments. The hospital also pledged to construct a new mixed-use building across from the hospital to add more housing to the neighborhood. Right now, the property, a former car wash, is being used as a staging area for temporary construction offices and equipment.
Duncan, the hospital’s COO, said in an interview that the staging area will remain for another year because more construction is taking place in the lower levels of the hospital that aren’t visited by the public. Time also will be needed to make changes to the exterior of the original hospital to match the new tower so the structure will appear as though it is one building.
The mixed-use project would likely start unfolding after that, Duncan said.
“We have not taken that off the table,” Duncan said.
Reporting by Kaitlin McCallum is included in this story.
Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at [email protected].