Stamford Health has secured a zoning change and special permit for a $275 million rebuild of its Bennett Medical Center campus. Plans include a 73,000 SF cancer center, a 355-space garage, and behavioral health space growing to roughly 35,000 SF. Completion is projected around the start of 2031.
Stamford Health has secured a zoning change and special permit from Stamford’s Planning Board, moving a $275 million reconstruction of clinical space on its Bennett Medical Center campus into the next stage of review. Zoning Board action remains outstanding and will follow submission of a site plan over the coming months.
Funding for the program is largely identified. Connecticut Health and Educational Facilities Authority has approved $200 million in tax-exempt bonds. Chief Financial Officer Michael Veillette said the remaining $75 million will come from philanthropy and from reinvested operating funds, with the health system’s foundation preparing a fundraising campaign.
Work will proceed in sequence rather than all at once. Chief Operating Officer Liz Longmore said relocation of the Van Munching Inpatient Rehabilitation Unit is expected to start in early spring 2027 and take about a year, placing 20 private rooms in existing fourth-floor space near the hospital’s neuroscience programs for brain injury, neurosurgical and spinal patients. Cancer center and garage construction follows in late spring or early summer 2027 on a roughly two-year schedule. Converting the vacated cancer center into behavioral health space closes the program in about 18 months.
Behavioral health capacity grows from 11,000 SF to approximately 35,000 SF across two floors, enough for a partial hospitalization program and outpatient interventional psychiatric services. Stamford Health identified behavioral health as the community’s most pressing unmet need in its most recent Community Health Needs Assessment.
Parking drove much of the board’s deliberation. Rezoning Stillwater Avenue frontage from village commercial to hospital complex design district allows temporary spaces behind a landscaped 20-foot buffer during construction, and the board conditioned approval on removing them once the garage opens. An updated transportation demand management plan was also required. Campus parking rises from 1,400 to roughly 1,700 spaces. CT Examiner reported the Planning Board action.
Stamford Health, the nonprofit owner of the 305-bed hospital, is developing a 73,000 SF cancer center at the southwest corner of the campus near West Broad Street and Stillwater Avenue, more than twice the size of the existing 35,000 SF facility, alongside a 355-space parking structure. Jay Klein and Lisa Feinberg represented the hospital. Cancer programs operate through a partnership with Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center in Boston.