As it pursues its plan to build a $350 million, state-of-the-art campus off Plainsboro Road in Plainsboro, Princeton HealthCare System (PHCS), the parent company of the University Medical Center at Princeton, has named Hageman Lane resident Stephen Distler to chair its capital campaign.
Mr. Distler, a PHCS trustee and a retired managing director and treasurer for Warburg Pincus, a private equity investment firm, will work with a fund-raising team, seeking out principal and leadership gifts, corporate and foundation grants, and endowments.
The campaign, whose financial goals have not yet been set, will go beyond municipal boundaries, Mr. Distler said, adding that the current hospital and the proposed new facility will have a service area that stretches as far as Monroe Township. "We will be sharing information about the project with our neighbors throughout the region during the next 12 months," he said.
In November, after a nearly two-year internal and municipal process, PHCS contracted two purchasers for three of its current properties: the Philadelphia-based Lubert Adler, which will acquire the 12-acre Witherspoon Campus; and Princeton University, which will purchase the nine-acre Merwick Care Center site on Bayard Lane, and a two-acre surface parking lot on Franklin Avenue near the hospital's main campus.
According to PHCS President and CEO Barry Rabner, those potential sales, whose language is currently in the drafting stage, are expected to contribute significantly to the construction of a new 800,000-square-foot hospital, with the potential for expanding to 1.2 million square-feet over time.
Mr. Distler is a trustee of Washington University in St. Louis, the chairman of the board of Apex Learning Inc., and a trustee of the Princeton-based Teachers Support Network. He has also been a regular donor to Princeton Regional Schools and the Princeton Public Library.
Along with his wife, Dr. Roxanne Kendall, a pediatrician, he has also pledged $2 million toward the construction of Tufts University's new music center. A native of Long Island, Mr. Distler is a member of Tufts' class of '74. He went on to receive an MBA from the Stern School of Business at New York University.
The Township resident became a recognized figure locally when, in 2004, the Township Zoning Board granted a use variance to a building owned by Mr. Distler, the former Mike's Tavern on Bayard Lane. The variance was a first step toward his plan to build Astons, a jazz bar and restaurant on that site, but the plan has remained in the zoning department because several neighbors spoke out against it.