Press Releases July 29, 2008
Smilow Cancer Hospital celebrates construction milestone with topping off ceremony
NEW HAVEN — The final ceremonial steel girders were hoisted into place on July 24 on the 14th floor of the Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven. Four, specially-painted white beams were signed by Yale-New Haven Hospital (YNHH) employees, construction workers, and students from Meadowside Elementary School in Milford in support of a classmate who has been treated for cancer at YNHH. Six-year-old Nick Branca of Milford, who was diagnosed with a rare form of brain cancer when he was 3, was at the topping off ceremony with his parents. Nick, wearing a hard hat, gave the signal to the construction workers to raise the girders, including "his" beam.
"These ceremonial beams, along with all of the steel already in place, symbolize in words and deeds that the hope of a new day is drawing closer," said Marna P. Borgstrom, president and CEO, Yale-New Haven Hospital. "The topping off is a major step closer to opening the Smilow Cancer Hospital — a facility we believe will become one of the top cancer treatment centers in the nation, if not the world."
Ground was broken for the Smilow Cancer Hospital on Sept. 6, 2006, and the building was officially named Smilow Cancer Hospital on Oct. 31, 2007, after major donor Joel E. Smilow (Yale College ’54).
The new cancer hospital will cost an estimated $467 million, and is expected to open in late 2009. The 14-story facility will contain nearly 500,000 square feet, and will include 112 inpatient beds, outpatient treatment rooms, expanded operating rooms, infusion suites, diagnostic imaging services and a specialized women’s cancer center as well as a floor each for diagnostic and therapeutic radiology.
Yale-New Haven Hospital currently offers a comprehensive array of cancer diagnosis and treatment services with Yale Cancer Center, which is southern New England’s only designated Comprehensive Cancer Center — and one of only 41 in the nation.
http://www.ynhh.org/press/2008/topoff.html
Yale-New Haven Hospital is a 944-bed, not-for-profit hospital serving as the primary teaching hospital for the Yale School of Medicine. Yale-New Haven was founded as the fourth voluntary hospital in the U.S. in 1826 and today, the hospital complex includes Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital and Yale-New Haven Psychiatric Hospital, with a combined medical staff of about 3,400 university and community.
