The future of NYU Downtown Hospital

NYU Downtown Hospital is one-upping itself. As the only hospital south of 11^th Street, the facility typically treats every medical emergency from Wall Street to Tribeca to Chinatown. Now, thanks to a $25 million renovation, the hospital is expanding its emergency center to better accommodate the more than 30,000 urgent-care cases it currently treats each year.

The renovation has been in the works since the mid-1990s, when it was focused primarily on giving the emergency center a facelift and systems upgrade, working with a $5 million budget. But in the wake of September 11, 2001, when the hospital treated a record number of patients, officials decided that the time was ripe to revamp the center in a much bigger way.

"This is the largest expansion this hospital's undergone in 30 years," said Michael Rawlings, the hospital's director of engineering and project executive. "It is going to make a huge difference in terms of capacity for serving the Lower Manhattan community."

Rawlings, who has headed up the renovation since 1998, explains that the project is broken up into three phases -- essentially, tackling each of three different areas of the hospital one at a time -- that will allow the emergency center to operate fully during construction.

The first phase kicked off in November 2003 and will convert the hospital's interior courtyard into the primary urgent care area. The two new floors being built there will more than double the center's square footage and will house a greater number of private patient rooms, each equipped with complete emergency supplies and state-of-the-art monitoring and computer systems.

The renovation has been carefully planned to ensure no interruptions to daily emergency service *

Once phase one is completed in early 2005, Rawlings and team will dive into renovating the current emergency center space, where the chest pain unit will be upgraded to full acute-care level. This is good news for the 1,700 annual "chest pain" patients who visit the hospital annually -- 10 percent of whom experience full-scale heart attacks. Rawlings notes that Lower Manhattan "has the highest per capita incidence of heart attacks in New York City." (And curiously, he adds that an informal survey showed that more chest pain cases are logged at the hospital -- located just a few blocks north of Wall Street -- as the Dow Jones Industrial Average rises, rather than as it falls.)

Already the hospital is a leading treatment center for heart attacks, with an average treatment time of less than 30 minutes from the time of the ambulance call, compared with the national average of 83 minutes. The improvement and expansion of the chest pain unit will mean that more patients can benefit from the hospital's rapid response and have a greater chance at full recovery.

An important component of this project is the creation of the hospital's new main entrance on Gold Street *

By fall 2005, the final phase of renovation will begin on the emergency center's "Prompt Care" area, where non-acute patients will receive treatment in private rooms. The center's waiting area will also be renovated, making patient registration faster and easier.

Rawlings has carefully orchestrated the renovation to stay on schedule, with no interruptions to daily emergency service. "Obviously building a new emergency department in a 24-hour-a-day active hospital is challenging," he said. "But the way we've phased it helps manage all the details while keeping the center running."

Slated for completion in spring 2006, the future "Lehman Brothers Emergency Center" is an example of a successful Lower Manhattan public fundraising campaign -- topped off by a $5 million gift from the Lehman Brothers Foundation. Other local supporters, each of whom have contributed $1 million or more to the project, include the New York Stock Exchange, the Starr Foundation, the Bank of New York, and JP Morgan Chase. Federal and New York City governments have also contributed.

For a hospital whose downtown roots go back as far as 1853, the expanded NYU Downtown Hospital is another sign that Lower Manhattan continues to grow and recover from 9/11.

"Access to first-class medical care is vital in restoring public confidence in residing in, working in, and visiting Lower Manhattan," said Ralph Mastrangelo, chairman of the Hospital Board of Trustees. "The new Emergency Center is a critical component of the rebuilding of Lower Manhattan and will help to ensure the health and safety of downtown's 250,000 residents, 300,000 employees, and 7.5 million annual visitors."

For additional up-to-date information, please view LowerManhattan.info's interactive transportation map. We have pinpointed this project on the map so you can see exactly which streets are affected during construction. The streetwork layer of the map is updated daily by the Department of Transportation.

For more information about NYU Downtown Hospital and the Lehman Brothers Emergency Center expansion project, please click here.

* Renderings courtesy of Norman Rosenfeld Architects LLC