Massive Mass. General expansion wins approval

The BPDA board yesterday approved a $2-billion project by Massachusetts General Hospital to replace several current buildings with a new two-wing structure that will add 1 million square feet of clinical and patient-bed space - and leave room for a possible expansion of the Charles/MGH station should the state ever extend the Blue Line down Cambridge Street.

The new building, itself along Cambridge Street, would include 482 single-patient rooms, which would let the hospital dramatically reduce its need to double up patients, and would be designed to let the hospital quickly change the use of rooms to handle another infectious-disease pandemic. When done, the hospital's total number of beds would increase by 94.

The hospital says it will also group together related specialty centers so that patients, such as cardiovascular and cancer patients, will no longer have to walk around the MGH campus when they need to see more than one practitioner on a visit. The building will also serve as a redoubt to which hospital staffers can retreat in the event and continue to work for up to 96 hours in a natural disaster or an attack.

MGH Clinical Building filings.