Work begins on new hospital site

eplace the current University Medical Center at Princeton (UMCP)

Though the site is five times farther from Nassau Hall than the current hospital location on Witherspoon Street, the new site is “closer to 70 percent of the people who we’ve traditionally served” in central New Jersey, said Barry Rabner, the CEO and president of Princeton HealthCare Systems (PHCS).UMCP is owned by PHCS.

University Vice President and Secretary Robert Durkee ’69 said in an interview that the move will benefit the University despite the hospital being further away.

“It will be a much bigger, better, more modern hospital, so that’s really the benefit to students,” he said.

The new hospital will begin treating patients in summer 2011.

Rabner said he believes that the “public was meaningfully involved at all important points in our decision making,” noting that “in the last four years, we’ve had 150 public meetings on various aspects of the project.”

The facility “will be much easier to access for most people either through driving or through public transportation,” Rabner explained. The hospital will run a van to transport “people who have no other means of getting to the hospital, particularly people in Princeton who use our clinic,” he added.

Community reactions

Princeton residents had mixed reactions to the relocation of the hospital to Plainsboro.

Paul Epply-Schmidt ’83 described the relocation as “a terrible idea” and “a disservice to the community.”

“Having a hospital right in the middle of [the town] is a good idea,” Epply-Schmidt said.

He noted that the current building is located in an area of town with a high concentration of minority residents, adding that he wondered whether the neighborhood was a reason for the hospital’s relocation.

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“Minorities are entitled to a hospital just like anybody else is,” he said.

Another community resident, Eileen Long, said that after speaking to one of the hospital’s fundraising directors about the new facility, she believes that the move “presents a tremendous and valuable opportunity to the community overall.”

“They’ll be able to tap into new technology, new space,” Long said. “[The new facility] will be designed more to accommodate the growth that has happened in the community.”

But Long’s mother, Helen Long, said she disagreed.

“[The current facility is] a very nice hospital, and they’ve spent a lot of money doing it up,” Helen said. “I think they should leave it in Princeton.”

Peter Carril ’81, a town resident whose two children were born in the current medical center, noted that “it’s always sad to see something that’s been part of the community leave.”

“It’s a great location right now, so when it moves it won’t be as convenient,” he said, “but we have to wait and see.”

Facility overview

The new complex will include a 636,000-square-foot, eight-story hospital building, a medical office building, a fitness and wellness center, an education center, a skilled nursing facility, a retirement community and a 32-acre park, Rabner said. He added that the new hospital will have about 270 beds, up from 220 beds at the current hospital.

The new facility’s intensive care unit will have a patient-monitoring system that will enable caregivers “to be aware of a patient’s health status from anywhere in the building,” Rabner said.

The new facility will have only single-patient rooms to limit the spread of infections and increase patient privacy, according to a July 2008 statement from the hospital.

“Private patient rooms is probably the single greatest thing we can do to improve patient outcomes for the patients in our hospital,” PHCS Vice President for Development Joseph Stampe said.

Construction on the new hospital will last three years and cost an estimated $441.7 million. Fundraising efforts for the new hospital have been underway since 2006, and $76 million of the $115 million fundraising goal had been raised as of July.

The construction is funded by a combination of sources, including “philanthropy, savings, operations, the sale of assets and borrowing,” Rabner said.

What’s left behind

UMCP put three sites up for sale when it decided to relocate to Plainsboro, Durkee said. While the University is not purchasing the site that contains the main hospital, it is acquiring the other two sites.

The first of these two sites, Merwick, is about nine acres and within walking distance of campus, Durkee said, explaining that the University plans to use the Merwick property for faculty, staff and graduate student housing.

Merwick is immediately adjacent to the University-owned Stanworth Apartments, which is already used for faculty and staff housing and will soon also include graduate student housing.

The other site, which is only about an acre and a half, currently serves as a parking lot for UMCP. The University will use this site to build affordable housing for the community, Durkee said.

“We have a commitment to the Borough to provide a certain amount of affordable housing, and we will meet some of that commitment by constructing units on that site,” he explained.