Bristol Hospital hosted a ceremonial beam signing on Aug. 7 in celebration of the progress of the new Downtown Ambulatory Care Center at 15 Riverside Ave.
The new facility will be 60,000 square feet upon completion and will house several specialties including cardiology, endocrinology and diabetes, neurology, orthopedics, rheumatology, and urology.
The hospital invited various members of the community and project team to sign the “white painted portion of a roof beam that will be placed on the second floor of the structure,” according to a press release from the event.
Two of those people were Richard Rendina, chairman and CEO of Rendina Healthcare Real Estate, and Steve Barry, executive vice president and overseer of business development of Rendina Healthcare Real Estate.
“I’m a cancer survivor, I lost my father to cancer, he was only 52, and so healthcare brings a whole new meaning to me and my family since he passed, and we feel like it’s playing a role in the community and bringing quality healthcare to its residents,” said Rendina. “It’s a small part to play in terms of we’re putting up the walls, but it’s really those physicians and nurses who are going to be in this building… that really makes it rewarding, and this is the future of healthcare - bringing outpatient services into the community where the people are, where residents are, with a mission and a vision for keeping people out of the hospital, not in the hospital.”
Barry said that every aspect of the design of the ambulatory care center has “the patient in mind,” and that this facility will be a “one-stop-shop for patients in the community to come get a wide range of outpatient services.”
“I think it’s a great symbolism for all the teamwork that’s been involved to make the project a reality, it’s got a public-private partnership feel to it with the city land being involved, the hospital purchasing the land from the city, and then Rendina coming in and ground leasing the land from the hospital and financing the new project, so all of the team members coming together, being able to hit a milestone like this today and sign the beam together, and then it will be a lasting part of the project for years to come. This beam will be risen and placed in the new building, so this piece of history will be there forever,” said Barry.
In his opening remarks, president and CEO of Bristol Hospital, Kurt Barwis, discussed how the project officially began in 2015 when then chairman of the board, John Leone, announced the project. “Since we made that announcement,” said Barwis, “there’s been quite a bit of excitement in the community.”
Barwis said he “fully expects that we’ll occupy this building by this time next year,” and that the new facility will make Bristol Hospital more competitive when it comes to recruiting new physicians.
Barwis said, “The economic viability of your hospital is inseparably tied to the economic viability of the community, so where we can help really kind of spur economic development, it’s a really good thing.”
“There’s opportunity here, and part of the reason I’m here today is on behalf of the city staff that has worked tirelessly to make sure that everything happened to arrive at this point,” said Mayor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu. “We are very happy; we’re happy with the generations before us who got us to this point, we’re happy that we’re able to take that rearview look and understand what went wrong and what we need to do in the future, and we’re happy that we’re here with actually steel beams, dirt, gravel, and shovels in the ground, because this is actually a physical sign of the progress that people have been waiting for for years. So on behalf of the city, thank you for being here for what is really a historical moment, and a beginning of a history that I think is really going to define downtown for the next generation.”