It's been a long time coming, but University Hospital in Newark will finally get the campus it was always promised.

Hospital execs this week launched phase one of a massive multi-stage, multi-year construction plan to expand and modernize New Jersey's only public hospital, which includes fully combining the spaces used by Ruters Health and University Hospital to turn a 50-year dream into reality.

Senior correspondent Joanna Gagas reports.

What we're standing in front of today, these blue buildings were supposed to be temporary buildings.

So, it is a huge step and a promise to the community to have these buildings come down and be the start of a huge campus revision.

A campus revision that University Hospital interim president and CEO Caitlyn Baston says is 50 years in the making.

That's how long ago these temporary trailers were built, always with the intention of replacing them with something better.

And this week, the hospital started work on that something better.

These buildings are a combination of university hospital staff and Ruckers University staff.

People have been working in these temporary buildings for years.

As they come down, we'll have a new building where they can work and collaborate, parking for the for the staff, and then also some clinical space in that first phase.

That building will be on this campus where these buildings are here.

Also included in the first phase of the project will be a major clinical outpatient office building that'll include modern ambulatory and multi-pety care which the former health commissioner says the community's been asking for for years.

So it is primary care.

It's also the specialist you might need to see.

The primary care doctor wants you to see a cardiologist or gastroenterenterologist or a dermatologist.

We really think about what the needs are and a big part of this is making sure that we're meeting the needs of the community and of our academic clinicians.

As part of the renovation, Ruckers University is turning over buildings they own on the property to University Hospital to continue and strengthen the existing partnership between the two and improve the space for both, says Chancellor Brian Stro.

From our perspective, it's much better for our docs and our staff and our people to have University Hospital be as as good as possible.

It's better for our docs because they can give state-of-the-art care in a way that um they otherwise couldn't.

It's better for our patients because we can provide state-of-the-art care in much nicer facilities than they otherwise had.

And it's better for our students because it it'll attract better you better faculty, the patients are happier.

Uh it's a nicer place to work.

It's sort of, you know, better all along.

Republican Assemblywoman Nancy Munoz has championed these renovations for years and says it's time the state invests in its only public hospital both to meet the needs of the community and to demonstrate that the state sees its value as the only level one trauma center in North Jersey.

You want our public facility to be state-of-the-art.

the other hospitals look great and it it helps to attract patients, the insured and and also serve the needs of the under and uninsured because what we want to see is that the best doctors in the state are there, the best staff are there, but we want the facility to match the faculty to match the employees so that that will attract those in the surrounding communities to say we know we have a good facility here.

Let's get our patients in here from AC around the entire region.

The first phase of this expansion is estimated to cost $335 million coming from some state funding, but mostly from federal American Rescue Plan dollars, which have to be spent by December 2026.

Baston says they will meet that deadline.

University Hospital is also in the final phase of expanding its emergency department on the main campus, a separate project that's been critical to meet its urgent care demands.

We saw during COVID, we need single patient rooms.

We don't need four bedded rooms where, you know, infections move back and forth between different patients.

So all of this, we need to modernize it because it's important for the people across New Jersey, particularly in the northern part of the state.

And the second phase of the renovation project will be a total upgrade to the hospital's main campus.

As we do this plan, it's going to take a few years for these buildings and the whole new hospital campus to be built.

And so we're going to consistently be looking at how to rightsize that, what the community needs are at that time, and how to make sure we're staffing and growing appropriately.

If all goes according to plan, the timing for the completion of phase 1 is the end of 2027.

Phase 2 is still uncertain as of now.

In Newark, I'm Joanna Gagas, NJ Spotlight News.

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