Laura Glesby Photo
YNHH leaders and city officials break out their shovels.
Yale New Haven Hospital ceremoniously started construction Wednesday on a long-awaited, $838 million neurosciences center in the Dwight neighborhood, celebrating the forthcoming addition as “transformative” for patients with brain-related illnesses.
The center will feature two towers containing operating rooms, radiology services, neuroscience intensive care units, and a total of 201 inpatient beds serving both neuroscience and general medical patients at the corner of Sherman and George.
Those buildings include the Sherman Tower, a new eight-floor building on Sherman Avenue, and the McGivney Tower, a seven-floor building atop the current McGivney Advanced Surgery Center at 659 George St.
Shepley Bulfinch
Rendering of the new neuroscience center.
YNHH is also building two parking garages, one 1,500-space facility where a surface parking lot currently exists adjacent to the hospital’s Saint Raphael campus, and another below Sherman Tower.
A “significant portion” of the center will be named the Adams Neurosciences Center due to a donation from Stephen and Denise Adams.
The project received initial city approvals in 2020; the pandemic delayed construction for several years. The project, designed by architecture firm Shepley Bulfinch, is slated to be finished by 2027.
Shepley Bulfinch
Depiction of Orchard Street garage.
The center will bolster YNHH Saint Raphael campus’s existing medical services while allowing the hospital to research and innovate treatments for neurological diseases like epilepsy, autoimmune disorders, movement disorders like Parkinson’s, and neurovascular conditions like strokes, said Yale-New Haven Hospital President Keith Churchwell. It will make Yale-New Haven a “destination hospital,” a participant in “a rapidly growing field that is constantly evolving,” Churchwell said.
Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz praised the project for creating “hundreds of construction jobs” — 400, to be exact.
“This project is a game changer for the city,” said Mayor Justin Elicker. “You could have chosen any one of our suburbs to site this facility, but you chose New Haven.”
Board of Alders President Tyisha Walker-Myers.
For Tyisha Walker-Myers, the president of the Board of Alders who represents the ward in which the new neuroscience center will be located, the significance of the center was personal.
Walker-Myers recalled sleeping over at her grandmother’s house one night as a 12-year-old, when her grandmother noticed that she had been seizing during the night. Walker-Myers saw a doctor at Saint Raphael’s and received a diagnosis of epilepsy. “What it would have been if we had this neuroscience center then,” she reflected.
As a teenager, Walker-Myers said after the ceremony, she would sometimes have 12 seizures over the course of one night. It took time — and many sleep studies — for Walker-Myers to gain some control over her symptoms.
Some Dwight and West River neighbors have expressed skepticism about the scale of new activity they expect to see in the neighborhood and the impact on air quality. Walker-Myers has been a supporter of the project. She expressed hope that the center will help residents of her ward access high-quality medical care — and learn more about neurological conditions like strokes that sometimes affect people without their knowledge.
Walker-Myers noted that, often fearing racism in healthcare institutions, many Black and Brown patients “don’t want to go to the doctor.” She said she hopes to collaborate with the hospital to raise awareness about the signs of neurological conditions in her neighborhood, perhaps through a door-knocking campaign.
This is great! Hopefully the walking, biking and bus routes to and from downtown and the new center, and from the main YNHH campus to the new center, will be significantly improved as part of this project.
Better street lighting, sidewalk and crosswalk improvements, bike lanes, bump outs with bus shelters, and attractive "infill" projects on the remaining empty parking lots are badly needed if the city expects more people to find healthier ways to get to these places.