Connecticut's Norwalk Hospital's $220M patient tower project is back on track post-merger with Northwell, promising modernized care spaces and advanced technology. Construction timeline and completion date still under discussion with focus on relocation plans for hospital services.
Nuvance Health photo
A photo of the current Norwalk Hospital in Connecticut.
The new owner of Norwalk Hospital in Connecticut will provide expertise and much-needed capital to begin working on a delayed $220 million patient bed tower — an expansion and renovation plan that represents a "transformation" for the medical center.
"The new tower and the renovation of existing space that's a part of that … is going to modernize the space that we provide care in," said Michelle Robertson, chief operating officer of Nuvance — the Danbury, Conn.-based health care system that officially merged with New York health care giant Northwell on May 7, 2025.
"Northwell … is leading-edge with their construction. We will definitely benefit from their expertise," Robertson told CT Insider recently, adding that capital from Northwell also was a major component of the deal.
"(Northwell's) investment in Connecticut … is definitely something that is going to be important," Robertson said. "The partnership absolutely is going to enable us to move quicker."
She was referring to Northwell's promise to invest $1 billion in Nuvance hospitals located in Norwalk, Danbury, New Milford and Sharon in Connecticut, in addition to three more in New York's Hudson River Valley. The seven hospitals and scores of outpatient sites in western Connecticut formerly run by Nuvance are now part of the largest health care system in New York.
Robertson spoke as several hundred people gathered outside Danbury Hospital May 15, 2025, to cut the ceremonial ribbon on the $22 billion Northwell-Nuvance partnership.
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont was also among the VIPs present at the event in Danbury where he touted the Northwell network, which now boasts 100,000 employees, 1,100 outpatient sites and 28 hospitals in the two states, CT Insider reported.
Construction Timeline Still to Be Determined
One of the first signs of new ownership that health care customers in western Connecticut will see, beyond the colorful Northwell logo on former Nuvance sites, is progress toward the twice-delayed Norwalk Hospital tower project.
"Everyone refers to it as a tower project, but it is a transformation of that campus," Robertson said in her interview with CT Insider. "What the community is going to see is our continued excellence in care, but they are also going to see more space that is dedicated to the family. Bigger rooms allow families to be comfortable … [and] to be part of the care. That's critical. We are inclusive of our families in our patient care."
Plans call for a 190,000-sq.-ft. tower and 50,000 sq. ft. of renovated space at the bend along Stevens Street adjacent to the hospital in Norwalk. The new building would replace older sections of the complex that date to 1918.
"For our medical surgical beds and our critical care beds, the care is very advanced and we need to have the space that really matches that," Robertson said. "To bring in some of that leading-edge technology we need bigger rooms than we needed in the past."
Other renovations include modernizing the hospital's labor and delivery ward and its neonatal intensive care unit.
"We're bringing in the latest technology for the care of those babies," she said. "And for the labor and delivery area, we're increasing the room size, so it is more inclusive of the family. In terms of competitiveness, I think it is going to be hard [for other maternity wards] to compete with our view of the Long Island Sound."
Questions still remain concerning the Norwalk Hospital tower, principally the construction's start and completion dates, according to CT Insider.
Robertson said that it is too early to say when and how long the project will take, except that a previously announced opening date for the addition in the winter of 2025-26 was "ambitious" due to the hospital's plans to move its services out of the proposed building zone to new locations to assure the medical center is fully functional during demolition and construction.
One example of a service that needs to relocate is the hospital's behavioral health unit.
"We are in the process of moving that unit into new space," Robinson said. "It is going to be completely modernized — a new behavioral health space."
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