Beth Israel, Dana-Farber formally announce plan to move Joslin Diabetes Center to make way for 14-story cancer hospital
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and the Dana-Farber Cancer Center wasted no time with their new partnership, yesterday telling the BPDA they will soon file detailed plans for razing the current Joslin Diabetes Center off Brookline Avenue to make way for a new, 14-story cancer hospital.
In their "letter of intent," the two Longwood Medical Area institutions say the new hospital will include 300 beds for Dana-Farber patients, 20 beds for cancer patients under short-term observation and room for new Beth Israel clinical services. The hospital basement will house both an "inpatient imaging department" and a 250-space garage.
The two say that Joslin will be moved to another building in Beth Israel's East campus, on Brookline Avenue, across Longwood Avenue from its current location.
Along with plans for the specific building, the two will also file an "institutional master plan" outlining possible development in and near the site over a ten-year period.
Dana-Farber currently has a small number of dedicated in-patient beds at Brigham and Women's Hospital. It recently announced it would drop its long-time affiliation with that hospital in favor of Beth Israel.
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Great
More construction traffic. Where are the CVS deliveries going to double park?
In the air
Where else?
Non-profits are so profitable for construction companies
The non-profit industry is constantly feeding the stomach of the construction industry. Better are the non-profits that are in the business of housing. They employ the housing managers that are related to construction executives running their projects (albeit while violating housing laws - but after all it's just human beings being housed, not like they are important).
Hope they save that mural on the Joslin building
The side of the Joslin building facing the Rosenberg ER has a an interesting mural outlining the development of medical knowledge about diabetes. I hope that it will be kept and reinstalled in the new Joslin location.
This Flickr photo shows a part of it.
My first thought
Worth going out of your way for to peep if one is in the area.
As founts of misinformation go
it is pretty cool. If I had diabetes, though, I think I would hope the my doctor did not owe too much of his medical knowledge to Imhotep.
Boston's city planners should be required to play SimCity
Whose idea was it to put 68,000 jobs and who knows how many hospital beds and exam rooms in such an inconvenient area?
We need a transportation network with rail at its core.
Any new construction in Longwood should be contingent on contributing to a transportation fund with the express purpose of adding a rail connection to the Orange Line and Commuter Rail at Ruggles and the Red Line at Central and JFK.
we need
We need a functioning transit agency first...
"Build it, and they will come" is why the T is such a hot mess these days.
This Is Why Medical Has Shifted to the Burbs
Longwood is a controlled mess. Yes, but Brigham was there first and then Deaconess and BI joined them. It has been over the course of a hundred+ years however. You can't roll that back.
There are also three distinct medical areas in Boston; Longwood, Boston Medical, and MGH. I would also throw in St. E's and the Faulkner and the Carney is just kind of sitting there. It is not just Longwood which has medical.
The Longwood area has three MBTA stops: Longwood, Brigham Circle, and Longwood Medical. That might be enough to handle employees.
Both my kids were born at Brigham. We didn't take the T when my wife was in labor. We drove. People don't want to take public transportation when they are sick or visiting the sick. Cars are better, and that's why there is so much parking there.
Traffic is also why the medical operations have shifted out to the suburbs more and more. That's why BI built their new cancer center in Weymouth. Someday if I have to get radiation I don't want to have to go home on a shuttle bus between Andrew and Quincy Center because someone threw a wheelchair on the tracks. Cars are better.
One more medical area
Don't forget Tufts Medical Center near Chinatown.
10 Points For Ron
Forgot about that.
Yes, many medical patients
Yes, many medical patients don’t want to take transit. But again, 68,000 jobs. And many outpatients, and the majority of people visiting someone, would be fine on transit.
Improving transit would make driving much easier for the people who do need to come by car.
The Green Line is physically unable to handle the load. MASCO’s website has a figure that if the Green Line ran once per minute, it would take over 9 hours to unload all the people who travel to Longwood daily. And the Green Line was built to funnel people downtown, where the jobs were in 1897. So it doesn’t help people coming from the Commuter Rail or city neighborhoods to the north or south.
Longwood has more jobs than most American cities. It should have a transit network that reflects this, with appropriate federal funding.
Cars are better?
Only because we have prioritized them.
I understand the need to use cars to "transport the sick", but when I "visit the sick" cars are the worst option.
Cars are not better for those who don't need them - fewer cars in an area makes it much easier for someone getting chemo to drive.
Just popping in to add before
Just popping in to add before more people come in and want to say "well sure patients driving make sense but what about the doctors??" - There is already extremely limited parking for employees for any of these institutions. The directors and have parking spots but pretty much everybody else, including fairly senior doctors, are either transit, or taking a shuttle from one of the park and ride areas. Or they're parking in nearby neighborhoods and walking in. I work nearby and they're constantly finding Longwood residents using our lot and hopping on the green line for the last mile
Yup
I worked in the area for several years about 20 years ago. To get parking you had to have a disability, get on a list, be required to have a car to do your work, or have high seniority/position. There were some commercial spots if your office moved to the old Sears building when that opened up.
When certain Harvard administrators were being asses about providing showers at HSPH for bike/run commuters, saying we should just go a half mile out of our way and pay for the gym, all we had to do was have senior faculty/deans in our coalition threaten to sign up for parking spaces.
They would bump the list given their seniority. It took only eight weeks to get those showers.
That's how the secure bike parking happened, too.
Great idea! The T has
Great idea! The T has maintenance issues today, so let’s continue to build more giant car-oriented developments in the city! That will show them!
Uh...
Rail line? I presume you don't mean a surface line, since there's waaaay too much in the way. Are you proposing a line that burrows under, Northeastern University, Huntington Ave and the E Line, and possibly the MFA and/or the Fenway depending on the route? It seems like it would be cheaper (and probably more popular) to build a tramway like the Roosevelt Island one in NYC.
Fun fact about SimCity!
The developers made underground parking because the game would be “really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking lots.”
https://bldgblog.com/2013/05/sim-city-an-interview-with-stone-librande/