Katz Women’s Hospital

Cost: $300 Million

North Shore-LIJ Health System’s new $300-million Katz Women’s Hospital in New Hyde Park, N.Y., features 88 private women’s health and acute-care rooms and the latest technology.

“It will become the new front door to Long Island Jewish [Medical Center],” says Bernie Dubin, vice president of project management and project executive for North Shore-LIJ Health System in Great Neck, N.Y. However, the women’s hospital will have a separate lobby and entrance from the acute-care facility.

“It will redefine what became an architectural composition [at the LIJ campus] and bring it together in a single image,” says Mustafa Abadan, the design partner responsible for the project at Skidmore Owings & Merrill of New York.

Construction manager Bovis Lend Lease of New York is building the 10-story, 250,000-sq-ft women’s pavilion within 50 ft of the existing hospital. The top two floors of the new building will house medical-surgical beds and will tie into Long Island Jewish. The structural-steel building has been designed to add three more floors above the current levels. Concrete spread footings support the structure.

“We have to maintain all the existing hospital activities,” says Rich Steimel, Bovis senior vice president in charge of the project. “Our challenge was to completely isolate our construction site.”

Bovis has coordinated activities with hospital officials to limit vibration and accommodate the hospital’s surgical schedule.

The new bow-shaped women’s hospital, with its glazed, curved facade on a limestone clad base, replaces a former parking lot in front of the existing 54-year-old Long Island Jewish hospital.

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“The building takes that shape because of site constraints, and we wanted to make sure there were no patients looking at each other,” Abadan says. “The curvature gave a wider view angle. It’s a glass building with syncopation, or multiple rhythms that overlap, to deal with the different room sizes in the hospital.”

Labor and delivery suites are larger than traditional rooms to accommodate family members, Abadan adds.

Dubin says there is a tremendous need to update the facility’s labor and delivery accommodations. Postdelivery women currently share space in a four-room ward. Long Island Jewish has one of the busiest obstetrics programs in New York State.

“We want to make this a wonderful place for moms,” Dubin says. “The labor and delivery rooms are being designed to look like hotel rooms. Hidden behind the wall is all of the medical stuff, and that can be opened up as needs dictate.”

The hospital cares for women with high-risk pregnancies and connects to Schneider Children’s Hospital, which has a neonatal intensive care unit.

“In the center of the operating room suite in the surgical core is a neonatal stabilization unit, so if a baby is in distress, the baby can be put into that unit, a breath away,” Dubin says. “Then they can stabilize the baby and move the baby to the NICU unit if needed.”

The new facility also includes a gynecological surgical unit.

Abadan has employed textures and finishes throughout the facility that evoke a nurturing and healing environment, including garden areas between the old and new structures, limestone and slate in the lobby and an earth-tone color pallet.

“The slate brings the green color of nature into the building,” Abadan says. “The lobby is a flow from the outdoors indoors.”

This new pavilion is part of a systemwide initiative to open Katz Women’s Hospitals at multiple facilities. Saul Katz, chairman of the North Shore-LIJ Health System and president of the New York Mets, and his wife Iris donated money toward construction of the new facilities.

North Shore-LIJ anticipates completion in 2011.

Team Box

Owner: North Shore-LIJ Health System, Great Neck, N.Y.
Contractor: Bovis Lend Lease, New York
Architect: Skidmore Owings & Merrill, New York