The Kenneth C. Griffin Pavilion, a roughly $2.3 billion high-rise cancer center, is shifting from blueprints to jobsite on Memorial Sloan Kettering's Upper East Side campus. Turner and Consigli are teaming up on a 27-story pavilion that will run along York Avenue between East 66th and East 67th Streets, adding dozens of private inpatient rooms and more operating capacity to a hospital that already runs near full occupancy. Excavation and demolition are under way, setting up a multi-year build that MSK expects to start using in 2030.
Turner announced on May 26 that a joint venture with Consigli had been tapped to deliver the Kenneth C. Griffin Pavilion, and Turner Project Executive Jason Tavarez said the firms are "committed to delivering the project safely and efficiently while ensuring the hospital remains fully operational throughout construction." According to Turner Construction Company, the job will require tight coordination with MSK clinical teams and neighborhood stakeholders, with the builders characterizing it as a technically complex health care project that must protect ongoing patient care while crews work next door.
What the Griffin Pavilion Will Contain
The pavilion is designed to house 12 operating suites and 208 single-occupancy inpatient beds and is listed at roughly 883,000 square feet by the project architect. The build is pegged at about $2.3 billion, and plans call for the tower to connect to Memorial Hospital with an enclosed two-story patient bridge over East 67th Street. Coverage of the project has noted that the interior layout focuses on inpatient rooms and operating rooms sized and wired for advanced robotics and a modern digital infrastructure. CannonDesign and industry write-ups have detailed those specifications.
Timeline And Work Already Under Way
MSK reports that structural demolition and excavation are already in progress at the York Avenue site, with steel erection scheduled to begin in mid-2027 and a targeted completion in mid-2030. Those dates, along with monthly construction updates, appear in MSK project notices and working-group materials that the hospital says include continuous air-quality monitoring and other community safeguards. The schedule underscores the careful choreography required to deliver a major inpatient tower on an active hospital campus while keeping day-to-day clinical operations running.
Design Changes And Neighborhood Tradeoffs
After months of talks with Council Member Julie Menin and Manhattan Community Board 8, MSK trimmed the tower's height as part of a package of adjustments intended to limit neighborhood impacts. "The new design of the Griffin Pavilion will ensure that we have state-of-the-art cancer care for decades to come," MSK President Selwyn M. Vickers said in the institution's announcement. Officials said the redesign reduced the pavilion's overall vertical scale by roughly 76 feet while still preserving the planned bed count and clinical capacity.
Why MSK Says The Pavilion Is Needed
MSK and its design team present the expansion as a response to rising demand for complex inpatient cancer care as treatments become more specialized and the population ages. The pavilion is framed as a future-proofed facility, with standardized private rooms, larger operating room footprints and upgraded digital systems intended to improve safety and support next-generation therapies. National coverage has highlighted the project as an example of a high-rise hospital built around modern clinical workflows and advanced surgical robotics, and Newsweek profiled the design and operational goals during the program's earlier planning phase.
Turner and Consigli say they will continue working with MSK, city agencies and local groups to stage construction and limit disruption for neighbors and patients, according to the builders' release. For residents who want to follow each phase of work, MSK maintains a public project page that provides meeting notes, schedules and other community-engagement materials.
