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Connecticut Green Business Awards

Smilow Cancer Hospital at Yale-New Haven Hospital
25 Park St.
New Haven 06510
203-688-4242
ynhh.org/smilow
Vice president and executive director: Abe Lopman
Patient beds: 168

As officials at Yale-New Haven Hospital began planning to construct three new buildings on its downtown campus, there was never any question that each would feature the latest green technology.

“It’s the right thing to do,” says Brad Bevers, an architect and director of facility design and construction for YNHH. “We’re committed to energy conservation.”

That commitment is so strong that hospital officials did not bother to determine how much more it would cost to make the buildings meet the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) certification standards — they just decided to do it.

“We anticipate there will be cost savings, but we didn’t quantify it; we didn’t go to the trouble to find out the cost if we hadn’t done it [previously],” Bevers explains. For the same reason, hospital officials have no estimate of how much money the buildings will save in energy costs. That will become clear once the buildings have been in operation for a year or two, Bevers says.

The three new buildings are the Smilow Cancer Hospital at 25 Park Street, which opened in October; the new clinical laboratory at 55 Park Street, due to open this month; and an office, retail and residential complex at 2 Howe Street, where some offices opened in November and other sections will open this year.

The Smilow cancer center is the highest-profile building, since it is the most comprehensive cancer treatment facility in New England. The 14-story, 500,000-square-foot facility will feature 168 beds, 12 operating rooms, infusion suites, diagnostic imaging services and a women’s cancer facility.

The building features a healing garden that provides green space in an urban setting, high-efficiency lighting with motion detectors, a high-efficiency heating and air-conditioning system, emissions-reduction technology, a terra cotta exterior designed for more efficient heat gain and loss, bike racks and showers for employees who bicycle to work, green flooring and paint materials, and sensor-activated water faucets.

At the building’s dedication, Yale University alumnus and former Playtex Chairman Joel E. Smilow, who provided the philanthropic gift that funded the new center, said: “Great facilities like this new hospital help you attract and motivate outstanding people and make it easier for them to interrelate with one another. That’s where the longer-term payoff comes. The immediate benefits — providing a better place for healing and helping tens of thousands of victims of cancer — are obvious. We can only dream about the day when the building isn’t needed because we’ve found a cure for cancer.”