In a major construction push, Hartford Hospital plans to invest more than $1 billion in the next decade at its flagship Hartford campus, with projects including a parking garage, a community health services center fashioned out of three historic buildings and, likely, another patient tower that has long been a priority for the hospital.
The vision is outlined in a draft master plan submitted to city for the hospital’s 65-acre campus. The plans — and the price tag — also were outlined at a recent meeting of leaders in the city’s Frog Hollow neighborhood, which borders the hospital grounds.
The first project that the hospital is expected to tackle is a parking garage of up to 1,600 spaces. The construction is set to begin in early December with the demolition of an aging, employee parking garage at the southwest corner of Seymour and Jefferson streets. Estimated to cost $100 million or more, the garage would likely unfold in two phases, both of which could be completed by 2027, according to Keith Grant, the hospital’s vice president of operations.
The garage, which would be used by both employees and the public, would eventually stretch the entire block along Jefferson Street between Seymour and Washington streets. The plans call for both clinical and community health services on the ground floor.
“This campus, in five-plus years, will be significantly different, and it has to be,” Grant said, after outlining the plans at the neighborhood meeting. Grant noted the quickening pace of advances in health care, but cautioned, “What we’re going to do specifically in each building, some of it will evolve.”
Hartford Hospital’s master plan also includes the construction of a new cancer care center and an expansion of the emergency department, plus the new patient tower potentially on the southeast corner of Seymour and Jefferson streets.
The master plan, which must be approved by the city, is conceptual and can change along with the hospital’s needs. And each project within the plan must still go through the approval process.
‘Reinventing and rebuilding’
Hartford Hospital’s master plan comes as Connecticut Children’s is nearly two years into construction on a $280 million addition to its hospital, which shares a campus with Hartford Hospital. The addition, expected to be finished by the end of 2025, will be connected by a skywalk to a $47 million parking garage across Washington Street.
The master plan for Hartford Hospital follows an $80 million addition to the Bliss Building that opened in 2021. The new wing is devoted entirely to patient care, focusing sharply on critical, or acute needs.
The new Bliss wing was the largest construction project on the campus since the $150 million Bone & Joint Institute orthopedic center opened in 2016.
At the opening of the new Bliss wing, Jeff Flaks, chief executive of Hartford HealthCare, the parent of Hartford Hospital and six others in the state, said the hospital was actively planning for a modern tower of patient rooms that would be specialized by floor, depending on the type of health need.
“This hospital is 166 years old,” Flaks told the Courant at the opening. “We have to be constantly reinventing and rebuilding it, and that is what is happening at this moment.”
In a statement late Friday, the hospital said it could not confirm specifics of the cancer care center, emergency department expansion or the new patient tower “but a larger expansion is under serious consideration to make Hartford Hospital a global destination for health care.”
History, progress
Redevelopment on urban hospital campuses often must thread the needle in balancing priorities.
Hospitals seek new structures to convey an image and indeed the resources to provide the latest advances in medical care. But those goals can come up against the push by preservationists and neighborhood leaders that seek to hold onto an architectural heritage that distinguishes the area.
The master plan submitted to the city notes eight historic properties owned by the hospital that “are undergoing active structural and exterior restorations.”
One of those is the Levi Felt House at 142 Jefferson St. built circa 1879 for an executive of the Travelers Insurance company. The Queen Anne-style home was singled out as one of the most notable properties when the Jefferson-Seymour National Historic District was formed in 1979.
The restoration is expected to be complete in 2025, and the space will be used for administrative offices.
Hartford Hospital also has tangled with preservationists and the Frog Hollow neighborhood over the fate of historic structures.
The hospital drew fire in 2021 when it sought to tear down the 1920s, Hall-Wilson laboratory on the southern tip of its campus. The idea was to demolish the brownstone, former laboratory, for a sorely-needed expansion of its on-campus power plant.
After an outcry from preservationists and neighborhood leaders, the laboratory was renovated and incorporated into the plant expansion.
Last year, a similar move to demolish a 1920’s deteriorating apartment building at the corner of Washington and Jefferson met with similar, stiff opposition and the hospital backed off.
The master plan calls for the combination of that building and two neighboring structures — all owned by the hospital — into an $80 million medical office project. The project would incorporate the facades of the three buildings into the new structure.
Construction on the project is expected to begin in the summer of 2025 and be completed by early 2027. The new medical building is expected to be used for community-health services for people that don’t necessarily need to go to the main hospital or may feel intimidated by doing so, Grant said.
Services could include dialysis, dental and oral surgery, specialty clinics, a food pharmacy and a diabetes life center. There also could be access to social workers and an expansion of the rooftop gardens that exist elsewhere on the hospital campus.
“It’s a more open introduction to the different opportunities and different pathways to health care,” Grant said.
Kenneth R. Gosselin can be reached at [email protected].
