The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) has opened a new specialty care center on the 171-acre redevelopment site anchored by the University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro (UMCPP).
Located on Plainsboro Road directly across from Merwick Rehabilitation Center, the new 25,000-square-foot CHOP facility opened on January 26 and will replace a leased CHOP facility on Alexander Road in West Windsor. CHOP owns roughly 13 acres of land at the hospital site, and the center can be expanded by up to 75,000 square feet to accommodate additional pediatric services.
With the completion of the pediatric medical office, three more components of the hospital site are due next. Last December the Planning Board approved Maplewood Senior Living, a 105-bed assisted living and memory care facility north of CHOP. It is a six acre site, owned by Hunter Gregory Realty of Westport, Connecticut.
An upscale adult retirement community is the largest project remaining. Apartment buildings with a maximum height of six stories will provide 315 residential units. That development sits on a 38-acre parcel between Merwick and the Firmenich campus, and is owned by Endeavor Property Group of Devon, Pennsylvania. According to a Princeton Healthcare representative, the age-restricted housing is expected to consist of one and two bedroom rentals.
Finally, a child day care and an adult day care center are to be built to the north of Maplewood. According to Barry Rabner, president and CEO of Princeton Healthcare, the day care complex is 4.5 acres and owned by two separate companies, Discovery Years Child Care and VCare.
The first phase of the hospital site included the 200-bed Merwick center, a nine-acre site owned by the for-profit Windsor Healthcare Communities of Norwood that opened in 2010; the hospital and medical offices of the UMCPP opened in 2012; and a 36-acre public park overlooking the Millstone River donated to the township by Princeton HealthCare System.
UMCPP sits on more than 50 acres. Nearly 50,000 square feet is leased to Princeton Fitness and Wellness, and the hospital rents the attached rectangular medical arts pavilion, owned by the Michigan State Retirement Plan Fund and managed by Bentall Kennedy. Princeton Healthcare can also add two additional stories to UMCPP and add another medical office building. However, Rabner says, no decision has been made with regard to future hospital expansion, though it does plan to proceed with a parking garage north of the hospital.
“For the last six months we’ve been near capacity with a lot of our services, a lot of our space,” Rabner says. “We want to be certain the increase in demand we’ve seen is sustainable.”
According to CHOP senior vice president Amy Lambert, there will be 16 medical and surgical specialties at CHOP’s new facility, as well as a sports medicine gym, auditory brainstem response testing, diagnostic X-ray services, and physical, occupational, and speech therapy.
CHOP has also been affiliated with UMCPP since 2009, with CHOP medical staff providing care for newborns, children, and adolescents at the hospital.
“Our new site is strictly out-patient ambulatory services,” Lambert says. “The services we provide in the hospital are professional in-patient services.”
