It was only fitting that the ceremony to cut the ribbon on the opening of the Jack and Sheryl Morris Cancer Center — a transformative moment in the state, for sure — would start with an effort to bring hundreds of the most noteworthy health care leaders and elected officials under one big tent on a drizzly day in New Brunswick.
It was symbolic of the center itself.
The Morris not only will bring leading doctors and researchers together in the first free-standing cancer hospital in the state (and just the 13th in the country), it also will serve as the center of an incredible RWJBarnabas Health campus in the city of New Brunswick — an anchor for care and research in the area that includes the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and, soon, the Helix, a hub for innovation unlike any that has existed in the state.
“The Jack and Sheryl Morris Cancer Center helps tie everything together,” CEO Mark Manigan told BINJE. “We already take care of the sick and injured from Hudson County to Toms River. We already provide more charity care than any other system, times two. And we have been focusing on the social determinants of health long before anyone used that phrase.
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“Now, in the middle of it, we’re engaging in cancer research and clinical care at the highest level. It’s really incredible.”
The 12-story, 520,000-square-foot facility aims to begin treating patients by the start of the summer. It will do so with 88 infusion beds, 80 exam rooms for adult and pediatric outpatient care, 96 inpatient beds and nine state-of-the-art operating rooms.
More than that, it also includes state-of-the-art laboratory facilities to support an additional 10 research teams made up of 10 researchers per team — or a total of 100 new investigators.
Dr. Steve Libutti, the William N. Hait Director of the Rutgers Cancer Institute and designer of every aspect of the center, said The Morris truly is a game-changer, one that will enable the translation of scientific discoveries to the bedside and back to the laboratory in an expedited manner, he said.
The cost of the center still is being determined, though it’s in the range of approximately $1 billion — a fee that was offset by state and local dollars as well as a sizeable personal contribution from Jack and Sheryl Morris.
Jack Morris said the value can never be quantified.
“This building gives people hope,” he said. “When you learn that you or your loved ones have cancer, you need hope. That’s what this center is providing.”
Its total economic impact will be hard to determine, too.
There will be approximately 3,500 permanent jobs, which follow the approximately 4,500 construction jobs needed to complete the work. Officials at the event talked about how the building itself will be an attraction for the top talent in the world.
“One thing we’re really excited about, the real game changer, is the recruiting and retaining of the best scientific and clinical minds in the business,” Manigan said. “In just over six years, when this first was on the drawing board, we’ve recruited over 100 sub specialists.”
DEVCO President Chris Paladino, which oversaw the construction of The Morris and is overseeing the development of the three-building Helix, said he already is seeing its impact, too.
The synergy of the two projects is inescapable.
“The Helix will be a hub of innovation and discovery and then, hopefully, job creation in New Jersey,” he said. “The first Helix building will have translational research, a medical school, startups and established pharmaceutical companies. There’s nowhere in the country where that exists, and it’s a great complement to what’s going on here.
“We’re having a lot of interest from startup oncology companies that want to be close to what they’re doing here at the Jack and Sheryl Morris Cancer Center.
“So, we’re creating an ecosystem more than a group of buildings. We’re going to have people who interact, collaborate and innovate — and they’re going to start companies and grow them within 10 or 15 miles of here.”
Manigan talked of how The Morris will be the center of a spoke-and-wheel model of overall cancer care in the RWJBH system.
“The novel therapies, the next-level-of-care research may be done a couple of feet from where we’re standing today, but that treatment protocol will be exported throughout the entire RWJBarnabas footprint — meaning more folks will be able to get care close to home,” he said.
“We’ll coordinate, based our whole operating model on coordinating care across centers of excellence, but this is really the center of that business model.”
The Jack and Sheryl Morris Cancer Center is the result of a vision of Morris and Barry Ostrowsky, the recently retired CEO of RWJBarnabas Health.
The two dreamed up the center when they were working out a merger of the RWJ and Barnabas systems.
Both were moved by the completed project.
“I want everybody to know how humble I am to stand here today,” Morris told the crowd under the big tent. “Almost four years ago, we had the groundbreaking. That was easy for me, because there were bulldozers and backhoes and things I’m real comfortable with.
“When I look at this building and I walk through it, it’s overwhelming and it’s emotional.”
Ostrowsky said the center was beyond his dreams.
“I would say this exceeds the aspirational goal,” he told BINJE. “We pictured something, but we didn’t know what it was going to look like, or how big a project it was going to be.
“I have to say: I couldn’t be prouder. I think this shows that if you dream big, you can make it happen.”
