Power of SUNY

Upstate Medical University to Build New Cancer Center

Upstate Medical University will break ground in early 2011 on the Upstate Cancer Center, a five-story $74-million facility that will bring all of the university’s outpatient cancer services - pediatric and adult - under one roof. The center is expected to open in September 2013.

The new facility will encompass 90,000 square feet on three stories and feature 27 private infusion areas, four-season rooftop healing gardens, meditation room, family resource center, multidisciplinary practice locations, private space for genetic, financial and other counseling services, a boutique for patient apparel and other personal products and three linear accelerator rooms. The facility will include two additional floors to accommodate future expansion.

The Upstate Cancer Center will be located on the site west of Upstate University Hospital that currently houses the University’s Regional Oncology Center (ROC) and a parking lot. The facility will wrap around the ROC, incorporate the Gamma Knife Center and connect to the hospital’s west wing.

“Give Hope a New Home,” a fundraising campaign that seeks to raise $15 million to partially fund the facility, will support construction of extra patient amenities ($10 million) incorporated in the design and fund programmatic endowments ($5 million) in adult medical oncology, children’s oncology, surgical oncology, brain tumors, breast cancer and the Upstate Cancer Research.

The number individuals receiving outpatient cancer treatment at SUNY Upstate has nearly doubled in the last ten years, from 8,501 in 1999 to 16,221 in 2009.