New Haven Independent

Thursday, the 6-year-old boy, who has a type of childhood cancer called neuroblastoma, got a special honor from his buddies out the window and the hospital that’s treating him. He watched the final steel beam — painted with his name on it — lift into the sky, marking the completion of the steel frame for the Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven.

Nick and the ironworkers took the spotlight Thursday afternoon at a press conference marking a milestone along the way to construction of the cancer center. After an intense political battle, the hospital broke ground on the cancer center in Sept. 2006.

The project is “on time and on budget,” announced Marna Borgstrom, the hospital’s president, at the “topping off” ceremony. The building is scheduled for a grand opening in 2009.

As they sweated away on the project for the past 18 months, the ironworkers have made a point to personalize their work with painted messages. “Thanks, Doc!” reads one. “Thank you nurses,” reads another, emblazoned in pink. “Bald is beautiful” reads another, yet to be debuted, according to ironworker Andy Batters. The crew works for CAPCO and belongs to locals from New Haven, Hartford and Rhode Island.

From his bed at the children’s ward at YNHH, Nick fostered an appreciation for the workers — as they did him. He’d always wave, said his mom, Margie Branca. He’d try to get outside to where they were at work, hoisting and securing beams. So the workers decided to paint him a beam of his own. They got it signed by Nick’s classmates at the Meadowside Elementary School in Milford.

Thursday, Nick craned his neck to watch the beam go up in the sky. And he posed with his buddies for a quick photo op. Nick himself had a bout of shyness, with TV cameras closing in. His dad Jeff (at right in photo at the top of this story, with Nick and ironworkers Batters and Shaun McCauley) was thrilled to be part of what is being touted as a world-class cancer center.

“We feel like he’s a piece of that building,” Jeff Branca said.

The press event included remarks from the governor, mayor and donor Joel Smilow, a Yale alum for whom the building is named. His major philanthropic offering made the $467 million project possible. Smilow said he’d reserve some of his remarks so he had something left to say at the third ceremony marking the cancer center’s construction progress — the grand opening in 2009.

The center will fill out the medical district skyline, standing 14 stories high. It will hold 112 inpatient beds, as well as “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.”

Dr. Robert Alpern, dean of the Yale School of Medicine, called the hospital a pioneer in cancer research and treatment. “Chemotherapy as we know it today was first administered to a patient at Yale-New Haven,” he reminded the crowd, most of whom were wearing tags identifying themselves as hospital employees.

Borgstrom cultivated a sense of urgency in getting the center going. “Since construction began two years ago, more than 35,000 new cases of cancer have been detected in Connecticut alone,” she said. The steel beams, she said, “symbolize in words and deeds that the hope of a new day is drawing closer.”