Miriam Hospital’s $116 million expansion of its main campus, including two
new three-story buildings, will begin in the winter despite opposition from
East Side residents who neighbor the Lifespan hospital.
Providence’s planning commission approved the project in June, much to the dismay of the area’s Summit Neighborhood Association, who had strongly organized against the construction. Miriam, which relocated to the neighborhood in 1952, sits in an unusual setting, with no buffers but for streets separating the hospital and its parking lots from one- and two-family homes.
The project will take five years to complete.
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“Miriam’s gotten everything they wanted and we’ve gotten nothing,” said John Bazik, president of the Summit Neighborhood Association. “The city really let us down.”
Following the disappointment of the planning commission’s decision, Bazik said the neighborhood association had yet to decide what its next step would be, but said he expected the group to continue to be a presence during the annual updates of Miriam’s institutional master plan.
The state already approved two certificates of need for one of the buildings, which includes surgical suites, radiology and beds. On July 10, the Department of Health for the Patient Services Center started to consider a certificate of need for the other building, which includes an emergency department and more beds.
Sandra Coletta, senior vice president and chief operating officer of Miriam Hospital, said the work would take Miriam to its licensed bed capacity of 247, from its current bed count of 208. Coletta said the hospital regularly struggles with its patient load, especially when a patient has to be put in isolation to avoid infection issues.
With so few private rooms available, beds are regularly lost when a semi-private room has to be devoted to a single patient. And Coletta said Miriam’s surgical suites are the oldest in the state and becoming a tight fit for patients, nurses and doctors as more and more technology is introduced.
“We don’t see having to come back to the community to ask for more,” said Coletta, who said the project is proof that the hospital is finally looking at its future in the long term. “This construction covers all the needs we anticipate in the foreseeable future.”
Coletta said Miriam, the most profitable hospital in the Lifespan network in recent years, will rely on fund raising and institutional funds to cover the cost of the work. The project, which doesn’t require any variances or changes to the layout of the hospital’s institutional zone, will be done in two phases likely stretching over five years.
Electrical work is scheduled to begin in the fall, followed by the demolition of the Sol Koffler Research Center and the old ICU/CCU building, which sits closest to Seventh Street.
Construction on a new three-story building, called the Patient Services Center, will begin in the spring and encompass a small area that served as a walkway/courtyard between the buildings. The first floor of the building will hold the radiology department, a cafeteria and meeting rooms. The second floor will house surgical suites and the third will contain inpatient beds.
When that work is completed, a second phase of construction will see the demolition of the building on the opposite side of the campus. Designed as an identical “bookend,” Coletta said a second new building would contain an emergency department and two floors of patient beds.
The hospital’s main building will continue to house the cardiology department and other testing rooms as well as provide relief space during the construction to functions that can’t be moved off the hospital’s main campus. When all is complete, an additional 28,000 square feet of space will be available to the hospital.
Bazik said the concern remains that Miriam’s institutional zone could be redrawn to include more of the neighborhood, or the parking lots surrounding the hospital, and there remains no assurances that the hospital won’t be back in another 10 or 15 years looking for more expansion.
Jonathan Howard, a member of the Summit association’s board and a resident for the last 20 years, said he was disappointed that the group’s efforts never met with any results, or serious consideration of moving more hospital functions out of the area. The original plan to emerge from the hospital’s drawing board in early 2003 was for a proposed four-story building on top of the Koffler research building.
“This is a path Miriam’s been on for the past 50 years, expanding at a bad site that was a bad site to begin with,” Howard said. He added: “In all of this, I’d have liked to seen someone seriously weigh the economic value of healthy neighborhoods in this city. I’d have liked to have seen an argument not just blocking this project, but asking for a true plan for the hospital’s long-term future.”
Coletta said the hospital is now in the process of selecting a construction manager with experience building in a residential setting and who will be mindful of the impact the work has on surrounding streets. She said the hospital is wrapping up interviews for a new full-time community relations liaison whose responsibilities will include responding to concerns left on the Miriam hot line (401-793-4040) and establishing a permanent board to deal with community issues that local residents will be asked to sit on.
The hospital is also looking for participation on an exterior design committee, which will play a role in selecting the look of the facades of both new buildings.
