By Michael P. Walsh
Special to the Voice
City and fire officials recently fast-tracked the permit and approval process to help Yale-New Haven Health implement emergency logistical support operations at its new 140,000-square-foot Regional Operations Center on Derby Avenue, Mayor Nancy R. Rossi announced.
Assistant Building Official Douglas Colter and Michael T. Esposito, the acting chief of the City of West Haven Fire Department Allingtown, conducted a safety inspection and issued a certificate of occupancy allowing Yale New Haven Health to open the operations center ahead of schedule for anticipated emergency use during the coronavirus pandemic, Rossi said.
Thanks to the city’s full cooperation, Rossi said the newly built center — an advanced warehouse for distributing medical supplies throughout the Yale New Haven Health System — is now in operation supporting Yale’s emergency supply mission aiding health care workers on the front lines of COVID-19.
Rossi said the city, at the request of Yale New Haven Health contractor A-Z Corp., also approved a recent overnight construction project to build two cleanrooms for sanitizing personal protective equipment for reuse. Colter and Esposito approved the new sanitizing rooms with a permit, followed by an inspection and approval — all within 24 hours, she said.
The regional distribution center, based at 600 Derby Ave., is composed of a one-story building with a mezzanine and 120 parking spaces. It is expected to employ up to 95 managers and staff, with half of the positions newly created jobs, officials have said.
Yale-New Haven Health officials, joined by city and state leaders, broke ground on the operations center in September 2018.
Yale-New Haven Health purchased the 116-acre property off Route 34 in August 2017 to build a strategic operations center and distribution warehouse for medical supplies that can serve its expansive health care system in Connecticut and Rhode Island and other clinical partners across the region.
The wooded property, formerly owned by Acorn Technology Campus LLC, abuts the Regional Water Authority’s Maltby Lakes reservoir. A large swath of the property — 39 acres — was set aside for preservation by Yale New Haven Health.
Yale-New Haven Health System includes five hospitals — Bridgeport, Greenwich, Lawrence + Memorial, Westerly (Rhode Island) and Yale New Haven — as well as several specialty networks and Northeast Medical Group, a nonprofit medical foundation with hundreds of community-based and hospital-employed physicians.