The new 250,000 sf facility, designed by NBBJ of Columbus, OH, is named after Maria Fareri, a 13-year-old Greenwich CT, youngster who passed away five years ago after contracting rabies from a bat bite.

"Today, we break ground for the Maria Fareri Children's Hospital and new regional Trauma Center and begin building a world-class facility like no other on the East Coast, for the children and adults of the Hudson Valley and beyond," says Edward Stolzenberg, president and chief executive officer of Westchester Medical Center. "At Westchester Medical Center we already have physicians and nursing staff who are among the best in the world, and soon we will have a facility that will be of equal quality."

The hospital and trauma center, when completed by the spring of 2003, will include a separate children's emergency department; a family resource center where parents can obtain information about disease and treatments from a variety of sources including online computer searches; consultation rooms, food court and community conference center; kitchen facilities, a children's pre-operative learning center and 60 pediatric rooms.

As part of The Westchester Medical Center campus, the children's hospital will have the region's only Pediatric Intensive Care and Neonatal Intensive Care units Cystic Fibrosis Center, Children's Cancer Center and the region's largest pediatric cardiology and pediatric cardiac surgery programs, hospital officials relate.

At the ceremony, a number of state and county government officials including: Lt. Governor Mary O. Donohue, New York State Health Commissioner Antonia Novella as well as Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano were among the more than 1,000 attendees.

However, the highlight of the groundbreaking ceremony was the speech by Brenda Fareri, the mother of Maria, who told the gathering that her daughter had "many wishes and dreams," and that one of her wishes was to assure the health of children. She says that the work at the new children's hospital will allow her daughter's memory to live on.

Want to continue reading?
Become a Free ALM Digital Reader.

Once you are an ALM Digital Member, you’ll receive:

  • Breaking commercial real estate news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical coverage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.

John Jordan

John Jordan is a veteran journalist with 36 years of print and digital media experience.