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Date: 8/1/2023
NORTHAMPTON — During its meeting on July 28, the Northampton Planning Board provided a site plan approval for a 7,500-square-foot expansion and renovation to Cooley Dickinson Hospital’s emergency department.
According to Mike Petrin, a senior project manager with VHB in Springfield, the addition will be located in front of the existing Emergency Room entrance and John Slater, the director of Cooley Dickinson, said it would not affect parking.
“The addition comes out to an island that currently is where our emergency drop-off so we’re not impacting the flow of our traffic through our lot. We’re not impacting any parking…all we’re doing is making a new drop-off area,” he said.
According to Slater, the hospital is focusing on expanding its nurse’s station and pushing its current waiting room out to the front. They are also planning to convert all of their rooms to private rooms while adding more space to work.
According to Cooley Dickinson’s website, the 7,500-square-foot addition will include more beds, more patient rooms and a family waiting area. The new space will also hold a computerized tomography scan machine, which provides timely access to diagnostic imaging.
The hospital is expected to serve around 40,000 patients in 2023, but the building is currently 40% undersized. The shortage of current space is leading to some patients having to be treated out in the hallways.
The project is part of a $19 million investment in the emergency room and is expected to be completed in 2025.
The Planning Board approved the site plan approval unanimously with conditions that include additional spaces for bicycles, two more trees and the notion that Cooley Dickinson will submit their storm management plans to the DPW.