St. Joseph’s ready to open emergency services building

SYRACUSE — St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center prepared to open a new emergency services building by holding a ribbon cutting and blessing ceremony this morning.

The building, named the Ralph and Christina Nappi Emergency Services Building, is located on North Townsend Street. It will open its emergency department and psychiatric emergency program Feb. 1.

The 140,000-square-foot facility holds a clinical observation unit and chest-pain center. It contains 54 exam rooms, up from St. Joseph’s previous total of 44, and will allow the hospital to handle around 70,000 encounters a year, up from about 50,000.

In addition, the building contains a 2,000-square-foot data center. The hospital built in an additional 1,000 square feet for future data center expansion.

The building carried a price tag of $80 million and is part of $220 million in expansion work that makes up a second phase of St. Joseph’s facilities master plan. The next portion of that work includes a 110-room, 104,000-square-foot patient tower, 73,000-squre-foot surgical suite, 25-bed post-anesthesia care unit, and a greenway corridor to North Side businesses. That segment of work is scheduled for completion in 2014.

St. Joseph’s is funding the second phase of its facilities master plan using $177 million in bonding from Onondaga County, along with financing from hospital fundraising and cash reserves. It is also using a $2.5 million economic development grant that New York State awarded as part of its Regional Economic Development Council initiative.

St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center is a 431-bed, nonprofit hospital and health-care network. It is affiliated with Franciscan Companies and sponsored by the Sisters of St. Francis. The hospital serves patients form Onondaga County and 15 surrounding counties.

Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com