Stamford Hospital advances $275 million plan for new cancer center, behavioral health expansion

CT Examiner – Sunday, August 30, 2026
By Eric Obernauer

STAMFORD — Stamford Hospital’s plans for a new cancer center, expanded behavioral health facility, and a new multilevel parking garage have taken a major step forward following the Planning Board’s approval of a zoning change and special permit tied to the hospital’s proposed redevelopment.

The $275 million project will substantially reshape the hospital’s Bennett Medical Center campus to include construction of a new 73,000-square-foot cancer center — more than double the size of the hospital’s existing cancer center — and an accompanying 355-space parking structure. Both will be built on the southwest corner of the hospital grounds near West Broad Street and Stillwater Avenue.

The hospital’s behavioral health services, in turn, will be relocated to the existing cancer center adjacent to the primary hospital structure once the new cancer center is complete.

The additional parking will be offset slightly by the elimination of some other existing spaces that will give way to the new construction. Still, the combined work will result in a net increase of available spaces from the current 1,400 spaces to approximately 1,700 once the project is complete.

The Van Munching Inpatient Rehabilitation Unit, currently located in the oldest building on the Bennett Medical Center campus, will also be moved to a new location in existing space on the fourth floor of Stamford Hospital nearer to the hospital’s other neuroscience programs. The new unit is planned to have 20 private rooms with advanced specialized treatment and recreational areas for brain injury, neurosurgical and spinal patients.

Stamford Health, the nonprofit corporation that owns the 305-bed hospital, has not yet said if it intends to demolish or repurpose the rehabilitation center’s existing building once it is vacated.

The full project still requires additional approvals by the Zoning Board, which will hear the remainder of the application once a proposed site plan is submitted over the next few months.

In the meantime, to enable the work to proceed, the Planning Board approved a zoning change for portions of the hospital’s Stillwater Avenue frontage from a “village commercial” to a “hospital complex design district” designation. The change will allow the hospital to use portions of that area for temporary parking — which will be shielded by a landscaped 20-foot buffer — once the other work gets underway.

“We want to make sure that everyone who needs a parking space at the hospital has a parking space because while construction of the cancer center and other pieces of this project are underway, there will be fewer parking spaces. So, having these parking spaces on Stillwater Avenue during that construction period will be important,” said Jay Klein, one of two attorneys representing the hospital.

The Planning Board also imposed conditions on its approval including removal of the temporary parking along Stillwater Avenue once the new parking structure is complete. Doing so, Klein said, could eventually enable that space to be repurposed for another use such as a neighborhood retail facility or housing for some of the hospital’s staff.

Lisa Feinberg, Klein’s law partner, emphasized that the parking along Stillwater Avenue — while potentially annoying to nearby residents — is not intended for the long term. “It’s just part of the process,” she said. “A hospital is different from any other type of business and has to operate 24/7 every single day of the year. It can’t say ‘sorry, we’re closed today.’ It has to stay open, and we need this flexibility in order to ensure that can happen.”

To ameliorate the already crowded parking situation for those who work in that part of the city, the board — at the urging of Planning Board Chair Jennifer Godzeno — also agreed to require the hospital to submit an updated transportation demand management plan. The plan would seek to reduce the number of hospital employees who drive to work by incentivizing them to get to work by carpooling, mass transit, or other means.

“We will never be able to pave our way out of our parking issues, but given Stamford Hospital’s position as a major employer, I believe there is an opportunity here for us to address the existing parking constraints by encouraging its employees to travel by means other than single-occupancy vehicle,” Godzeno said.

The multiyear project will proceed in phases.

Liz Longmore, Stamford Health’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, told CT Examiner that work on the new rehabilitation unit is expected to begin in early spring 2027 and take about a year.

Construction of the new cancer center and parking garage will begin later next spring or in the early summer of 2027 and take approximately two years, Longmore said.

The final phase — which will consist of converting the existing cancer center to a behavioral health facility — will commence after all the other work is complete and take about 18 months, with a projected completion date around the beginning of 2031.

Cancer center

The hospital has described the overall project as a multiyear effort to modernize its facilities and expand services.

The new cancer center alone will be more than twice the size of the existing 35,000-square-foot center, which Longmore said will enable Stamford Health to increase capacity and provide a more patient-centered experience.

With the expanded facility, the hospital will also be positioned to continue pioneering new therapies and treatments through its partnership with Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center in Boston, she said.

Examples cited by Longmore include the use of a newly approved new drug to treat pancreatic cancer, a new high-intensity ultrasound tool to treat prostate cancer, and a specialized form of immunotherapy capable of modifying a patient’s own immune cells in a laboratory to find and destroy cancer cells.

“Our existing cancer center has been renovated many times, and we have outgrown it. Our new, larger center will give our clinicians a facility that is better equipped to care for more patients and introduce the most advanced treatments,” Longmore said.

Behavioral health

Stamford Health has characterized behavioral health as the community’s most pressing unmet health need, based on its most recent Community Health Needs Assessment.

By repurposing its existing cancer center to meet this need, the hospital is looking to more than triple the space available for behavioral health services — from the current 11,000 square feet to approximately 35,000 square feet across two floors.

With the expanded space, Stamford Health plans to add a partial hospitalization program and outpatient interventional psychiatric services, Longmore said.

The project will also enable the hospital to continue building on other recent initiatives including the opening of its first outpatient behavioral health clinic in 2024 and newly dedicated crisis services for children and teens, she said.

Financing

At a time when hospitals and healthcare institutions have undergone significant consolidation, Stamford Health — as one of Connecticut’s remaining independent health systems — remains something of an outlier in its ability not just to maintain that status but to finance a project of this scale.

To do so, Stamford Health has received approval for $200 million in tax-exempt bonds through the Connecticut Health and Educational Facilities Authority, which facilitates tax-exempt borrowing for eligible healthcare and educational institutions.

Michael Veillette, Stamford Health’s senior vice president and chief financial officer, told CT Examiner the remaining $75 million will come from philanthropy and from reinvesting some of Stamford Health’s ongoing operating funds.

To support the project, Stamford Health said its foundation is also planning a major fundraising campaign.

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