Ground Broken on New Jersey St. Joseph’s Healthcare System Critical Care Building
(11/18/2009)
Posted by: Chris Gaerig, Online Editor
St. Joseph’s Healthcare System (SJHS) recently broke ground for a new, $100-million, 230,000-sq.-ft. critical care building (CCB), launching the expansion and renovation of St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in downtown Paterson, New Jersey. The master plan and the CCB, both designed by architecture firm Francis Cauffman, will upgrade the hospital’s services and focus on revitalizing the city’s economic health.
The CCB increases the 600-bed hospital’s efficiency and greatly increases its public presence in the region. When it is completed in 2012, the ground floor will house an expanded emergency room, designed to accommodate 125,000 visits annually, with separate entrances for the pediatric and adult emergency departments and a 50,000-sq.-ft. addition to the Level Two Regional Trauma Center. The upper level will have 12 operating rooms and two levels of cardiac, surgical, and critical and intensive care units.
The CCB replaces three buildings and a parking garage on the existing campus. Overall, the hospital expansion project adds approximately 655,000 square feet of new and renovated space. In addition to the CCB, the master plan relocates the hospital’s existing entrance, adds a new lobby, and renovates the interior spaces of the hospital.
Work has already started on the new lobby and renovation for a new conference center, boardroom, and physician lounge.
The master plan includes a range of new buildings adjacent to the hospital campus: a public parking garage, a hotel, an office building, a transit station, affordable housing, and a high-rise apartment building for local residents and medical students. The City of Paterson has simultaneously embarked on streetscape improvements around the campus that will include a new public park and a community center; SJHS has also contracted with a private developer to build an adjacent, City-operated parking structure.
