Thomas Breen photo
55 Park St.: Long leased, now owned, by YNHH.
Yale New Haven Hospital spent more than $101 million buying a Rubik’s Cube-patterned medical-district building that it has used for more than a decade for clinical laboratories, a pharmacy, a lecture auditorium, and patient and visitor access to the nearby Smilow Cancer Hospital and Air Rights Garage.
According to the city’s land records database, on May 22, Yale New Haven Hospital Inc. paid Fusco Park Street LLC $101.15 million to buy the six-story lab building at 55 Park St. The city last appraised that property for tax purposes as worth $83.7 million.
In an email comment provided to the Independent on Thursday, YNHH spokesperson Mark D’Antonio said the hospital purchased the Park Street property between MLK Boulevard and South Frontage Road because it has long leased space in the Fusco-built building, and decided to buy it when the now-former-landlord put it up on the market.
“We exercised our right of first refusal, a common practice that provides buyers a contractual right to be the first party to have an opportunity to place an offer on a property when it’s listed on the market for sale by its owner, in this case, the Fusco Corporation,” D’Antonio wrote.
He said that Yale New Haven Health — the regional healthcare system that includes seven hospital campuses across Connecticut and Rhode Island, including two in New Haven on York Street and on Chapel Street — has occupied 55 Park St. since the building’s opening in 2009.
The hospital uses “nearly five floors for dedicated clinical laboratories, clinical pharmacy, auditorium for lectures, as well as providing an essential patient and visitor pathway from Air Rights Garage to Smilow Cancer Hospital.”
According to online city tax records, 55 Park St.‘s latest annual local real estate tax bill came in at $2,268,630. D’Antonio said that the building will remain on the city’s tax rolls, even now that the nonprofit hospital system owns it.
Thomas Breen file photo
Fusco Corporation President and CEO Lynn Fusco.
Reached by email for comment, Fusco Corporation President and CEO Lynn Fusco said, “We are pleased with the sale of 55 Park Street to YNHH.” Asked if this sale will help in any way her company’s plans to build 500 new waterfront apartments on Long Wharf, she replied, “The development of the residential towers at Long Wharf is unrelated and ongoing.”
