Alders Give Neuro Center Final Sign-Offs

Yale New Haven Hospital’s planned new neuroscience center, St. Raphael’s campus expansion, and associated parking garages earned a suite of unanimous aldermanic approvals, paving the way for construction of the nearly $1 billion project to begin later this spring.

Those votes took place Tuesday night during the regular bimonthly full Board of Alders meeting, the first of the new year, held in the Aldermanic Chambers on the second floor of City Hall.

In just over five minutes, with no further amendments proposed and almost no discussion on the floor, the 28 alders present unanimously voted in support of all four items that the hospital needed in order to move the project forward.

The hospital plans to invest $838 million in the construction of a planned new 210-bed neuroscience medical research and treatment center, consisting of two connected eight-story and seven-story buildings to be built at the corner of Sherman Avenue and George Street.

The project also includes the planned expansion of the St. Raphael Hospital campus’s existing Emergency Department on Orchard Street, the construction of a new 200-space underground parking garage on Sherman Avenue, and the replacement of the existing Orchard Street Garage with two new seven-story parking garages on the block. One of those garages will hold 773 spaces, the other 722 spaces.

The unanimous approvals granted by the alders Tuesday night were for an amendment to the Medical Overall Parking Plan, an amendment to Planned Development District (PDD) #45, an order for the city to grant various licenses and easements to the hospital to facilitate the construction of a new overhead pedestrian bridge connecting the hospital to one of the new Orchard Street garages, and a resolution accepting the hospital’s traffic impact study as an amendment to the PDD.

According to YNHH Senior Vice President Public Affairs Vincent Petrini, Tuesday night’s approvals were the last legislative sign-offs that the hospital needed for the project. Now it plans to submit detailed site plans to the City Plan Commission for a technical site plan review, which is the last administrative hurdle the hospital must cross before beginning the project’s estimated five-year construction.

“We’re excited to break ground this spring,” Petrini said after the meeting.

Click here, here, here, and here to read more about the proposed neuroscience center project, including neighbors’ concerns about the potential detrimental impact that the two new seven-story parking garages might have on the Dwight and West River neighborhoods.