• The $300 million New Patient Pavilion at Harlem Hospital Center is about halfway complete, though its neighborhood on Lenox Avenue in Manhattan is already enjoying the giant mural on its fa�ade that recreates historic WPA art that is already found within the public hospital that is part of the N.Y.C. Health and Hospitals Corp. The overall project, which has been reduced in scope because of HHC’s budget constraints, entails adding clinical space and wrapping up construction in 2012.. TDX Construction of New York is the construction manager on the job.

• Two jobs are in the works at Yale-New Haven Hospital in New Haven, Conn., with Turner Construction finishing the $280 million Smilow Cancer Hospital and the FUSCO Group constructing a $78 million, 140,000-sq-ft, six-story clinical laboratory building.

• A new $2 billion hospital is rising in Voorhees, N.J., one of the largest projects in the region. The Virtua West Jersey Hospital will be a 657,000-sq-ft facility with 370 beds and several buildings, including an eight-story, 330,000-sq-ft patient tower and a five-story 350,000-sq-ft support and surgery services building. Designed by Hammel, Green & Abrahamson, the job is set to finish next spring with Turner Construction as construction manager.

• The North Shore-LIJ Health System broke ground in 2009 on its new $300 million Katz Women’s Hospital in New Hyde Park, N.Y. and aims to finish the project next year with its team of Bovis Lend Lease as construction manager and Skidmore Owings & Merrill as architect. The 88-bed facility will feature acute-care rooms and cutting edge medical equipment.

On the Horizon

• The NYU Langone Medical Center has a big menu of projects mapped out in its master plan, including a new 800,000 sq. ft. hospital to offer state-of-the-art acute patient care called the Kimmel Pavilion and plans for a major overhaul of Tisch Hospital. NYU has not yet set the budget for either project, but has secured donations totaling $260 million so far. The Kimmel project has a projected start date of 2013 and would include inpatient beds, procedure rooms, and other support spaces. The eventual goal is to have only private patient rooms in both facilities, and to integrate the two buildings. Also in the plans: a new 300,000-sq-ft “New Science Building.” for translational research.

• The University of Connecticut is trying to work out funding through state and federal resources for a long-planned expansion to its John Dempsey Hospital campus in Farmington, Conn. The institution is aiming to pursue a $350 million plan to build a new cancer center and expand laboratory and classroom space for its medical and dental schools.

Plugging into a Healthier Market

Plenty of industry associations have spent their time in the past two years lamenting the sad state of affairs in the construction world, but the New York Building Congress didn’t start up its new healthcare committee this year with hand-wringing in mind.

The new panel has already hosted four events with prominent speakers outlining the outlook for the healthcare market and providing a forum for discussing future trends, says Andrew Holwack, vice president at NYBC and the committee’s staff liaison. He says the group hasn’t ventured in the policy arena yet. “We’re serving as a clearinghouse for discussion of big-picture ideas and what’s going on in the market,” he says. “We’re fact-gathering.”

Among the speakers at three events already hosted were Wendy Saunders, deputy secretary for health, Medicaid and oversight for New York Gov. David Paterson, and an upcoming session will have Vicki Match Suna, senior v.p. and dean of the NYU Langone Medical Center, which has a big project itself in the wings.

The committee’s co-chairs are Mary Jane Eastman, principal at Perkins Eastman Architects, and Theresa Bischoff, CEO of the American Red Cross of Greater New York. It also has vice-chairs in:

• Jim Crispino, president, Francis Cauffman Architects

• Tom Gormley, v.p., URS Corp.

• Steve Pressler, executive v.p. and COO, STV

• Charles Maggio, senior v.p. and healthcare practice national director, Jones Lang Lasalle

• and NYU’s Match Suna.

“One of the reasons we started it was that this piece of the market appeared to be more active than others in today’s economy,” Pressler says. “And the other was that in the various other committees of the Building Congress, health care didn’t fit. We wanted to look more closely at what was happening in that part of the industry.”