Hospital expansion plan has no permit yet
No building permit has been issued yet in connection with HealthAlliance of the Hudson Valley’s plan to expand its hospital on Mary’s Avenue. Megan Weiss-Rowe, director of city communication and community engagement, said in an email that HealthAlliance “has not applied for or received a building permit yet.”
In March, officials announced that HealthAlliance had won its long-awaited approval from the state Department of Health to embark on a $92 million expansion of the company’s Mary’s Avenue campus in Midtown Kingston.
HealthAlliance and its parent company, Westchester Medical Center Health Network, had announced the approval some 17 months after the plan was submitted to the state.
In April, HealthAlliance Chief Executive Officer David Scarpino had said that construction would likely begin in six months.
Andrew LaGuardia, a spokesman for Westchester Medical Center Health Network, said Thursday that the project is “on or close to schedule to provide administrative elements, such as the submission of construction drawings, for the project.”
The plan — part of the effort to consolidate HealthAlliance’s inpatient and emergency services into a single location — calls for a four-story, 100,000-square-foot tower to be added to the Mary’s Avenue Campus (formerly known as Benedictine Hospital), increasing the complex’s size by about 30 percent.
HealthAlliance’s other campus, on Broadway, less
than half a mile away, is to be converted into a multidiscipline “medical village.” That plan still is awaiting state approval.
The new tower at the Mary’s Avenue site is to have a state-of-the-art emergency department and more than 200 patient beds. The hospital’s former emergency room closed after Benedictine and the Broadway building, then known as Kingston Hospital, affiliated under the HealthAlliance banner nearly a decade
ago. The Kingston Hospital emergency department, which now will close, was vastly expanded at the time.
The new section of the Mary’s Avenue Campus also will include an intensive care unit, an advanced medical imaging center, two computer-enhanced inpatient surgical suites, a same-day surgery center, an expanded postsurgical recovery unit and an advanced endoscopy services center.
A new Family Birth Place center along with a new main entrance and welcome center also will be constructed. All of HealthAlliance’s maternity services were consolidated into the Broadway building as part of the original affiliation.
Together, both projects are estimated to cost $133 million.
In a separate statement, Westchester Medical Center Health Network said that it stands ready to get the project done.
“The Westchester Medical Center Health Network and HealthAlliance of the Hudson Valley are fullycommitted to the transformative, $133 million Healthy Neighborhood Initiative, which includes the HealthAlliance Hospital: Mary’s Avenue enhancement project, as well as the conversion of HealthAlliance Hospital: Broadway Campus, into a medical village, a project that still awaits state approval,” the statement says.