From the Grand Street side of the new Jersey City Medical Center building, you can see the old towering white center building on the hill, as if time separated the two structures rather than distance, with the new building designed to meet the needs of a more modern society.
Built in the 1930s with the help of federal dollars, the old building has become something of a relic, constructed to serve a different kind of medicine than is practiced today.
“Back then, the hospitals served a different function,” said Dr. Jonathan Metsch, president and CEO of Liberty Health, during an official tour of the new facility on Dec. 4, explaining how the physically smaller new facility better fits modern uses.
The new hospital will open for business in March of next year. The old Jersey City Medical Center building on Clifton Place is still operating until the new one opens up.
“In the 1930s, hospitals offered custodial care,” he said. “Many chronically sick people would stay at the hospital for long periods of time. That’s why the old building had 1,800 beds. The average stay of a resident then was 20 to 30 days. Now patients stay four or five.”
The new seven-story facility has 326 beds. Most of the rooms look out onto New York Harbor, including panoramic views of Liberty State Park, the Statue of Liberty and the Liberty Science Center. Gone are the ward concepts of the old hospital.
The new hospital on Grand Street stands in the middle of a section of a city in transition, a new school being constructed across the street, while junkyards and heaps of metal scrap still occupy properties just west. But new development is slowly marching towards the facility from the glittering glass towers of Exchange Place as if following the tracks of the light rail.
“I like the idea that we are in the middle of it all,” said Brett Harwood, Chairman for the Campaign for the New Jersey City Medical Center. “This is a part of the city that is in transition.”
Harwood said in looking to the west and seeing the old Jersey City Medical Center, he is reminded of where the hospital has been and how much it has accomplished.
“We are changing with the times, but we are not abandoning those people we have always helped,” Harwood said.
Giving thanks
According to Harwood, the hospital is looking to open its doors officially on March 21, 2004.
“That means we have to have everything operational here before we bring the patients over,” he said, adding that the logistics of the move require nearly as much planning as the hospital’s construction. “We are working hard to make certain everything is ready.”
The night’s festivities was part of a combined effort to show off the new facility before the changeover, a kind of family affair in which those responsible for the financing, planning, construction and other aspects of the new facility got to stand back and look at what has been accomplished.
The affair was held partly to thank the donors who made the project possible. Its fund raising element, called Reshaping Healthcare, has already raised $6 million of an $8 million first phase goal, and announced that night the acquisition of a $650,000 challenge grant to the new Medical Center from the Kresge Foundation. The new hospital has about a $200 million price tag.
The new facility is an amalgam of functions craftily designed into a smaller structure, including an adult hospital, a children’s hospital, a foot trauma center, an emergency room, an imaging center, operating rooms, a heat center (with a new cardiac catherization lab, and rehab and testing areas), and regional health, HIV treatment, open heart surgery, EMS Communication, and conference education centers.
A tour of new medical center shows work still underway, wires dangling from a ceiling loaded with ducts, pipes, and the other bones of the facility, which will be tucked out of sight by drop ceilings and other panels when the final touches are installed.
Knows the place inside and out
Tom MacEwen, senior vice president of the hospital, has been involved with the project for more than 10 years and knows every twist and turn in the hospital structure, saying that the new hospital, although smaller than the older facility, is stuffed with cutting-edge technology and designed to reduce distances patients and staff need to travel to get from one area to another.
With patients’ rooms occupying the upper floors, the hospital’s lower floors become a series of interconnections, with appropriate labs, imaging units and other facilities located as centrally as possible. Even emergency room patients or same-day surgery patients do not have to travel more than 100 feet during their treatment.
The third and fourth floors of the hospital, he said, provide the most operational elements of the new hospital, with each element located near where it can provide the most use.
For Reverend James F. Reilly, chairman of Liberty Health’s Board of Trustees, the new hospital is a dream come true. Reilly was born in the old building and, according to his brother, Secaucus Deputy Mayor John Reilly, always dreamed of building a new hospital.
“This is the culmination of almost 20 years from concept to almost completion,” Reilly said. “A lot of hard work has gone into this – not to mention a lot of praying as well. We’ve known for many years that we would have to replace the aging facility.”
Metsch said it was an amazing team effort that brought about the construction of a new “world-class” hospital for Hudson County. “Father Reilly has done many amazing things, and helped bring about many miracles in his life,” Metsch said. “But he saved one miracle for us in helping bring about this hospital.”
Deputy Mayor John Reilly chuckled a little when he said, “We used to question whether my brother could ever make that dream a reality. But he proved us wrong. This is the happiest moment of his life.”