Featured image: Construction of the Phillip and Susan Ragon Building at Massachusetts General Hospital, January 2026. Photo: Kenneth C. Zirkel via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Massachusetts General Hospital’s Ragon Building, a two-tower clinical expansion on Cambridge Street in Boston’s West End, remains on track for a first phase opening in 2027, according to Mass General Brigham. The project was approved by state regulators at about $1.875 billion. Crews are now excavating, pouring concrete and installing building systems, according to the hospital’s construction look-ahead for Oct. 26 through Nov. 8, 2026. The project is moving forward as the parent system cuts costs elsewhere.
Ragon Building at a glance
- Size of the investment: $1,875,274,238 in approved capital spending, according to the Department of Public Health’s Determination of Need staff report. News outlets including the Boston Business Journal describe it as a $1.9 billion project.
- Start and end dates: site clearing began in summer 2022. The eastern tower, on the Blossom Street side, is scheduled to open in 2027, and the western tower, on the North Grove Street side, in 2030, per the MGH project timeline. In a 2024 filing, DPH wrote that MGB estimated the new building would open in late 2027.
- What it adds: 482 private single-bed inpatient rooms, 23 cardiovascular operating and interventional rooms, 100 infusion bays, 120 exam rooms and 864 underground parking spaces for patients and families, according to Mass General Brigham’s project page.
- Who moves in: the Mass General Brigham Cancer Institute and the Corrigan Minehan Heart Center.
How the state approved it
Mass General Brigham filed its Determination of Need application, number MGB-20121612-HE, in early 2021. DPH held a virtual public hearing on March 23, 2021, and 11 Ten Taxpayer Groups registered to take part, according to the staff report. The department also required an independent cost analysis.
The Public Health Council voted on May 4, 2022, and the approval took effect May 11, 2022. It was a partial approval. MGB had asked to use the new tower to add a net 94 licensed beds, 54 medical/surgical and 40 intensive care. DPH approved the building but not the extra beds. WBUR reported at the time that DPH staff saw “significant concerns” about the spending effects of added inpatient capacity.
The approval carried a required Community Health Initiative contribution of $93,763,711.90. Mass General Brigham’s project page describes a $62 million investment in Boston and North Suffolk communities through its MGH Community Health Impact Funds.
MGB came back in February 2024 with a request to add the 94 beds by keeping existing beds open instead of relocating them to the new building. A DPH memorandum listed the cost of that change as $0.00, with the maximum capital expenditure unchanged, and noted that the program received no public comments. The Public Health Council approved the beds unanimously in April 2024, NBC Boston and the Boston Business Journal reported. MGH had called its emergency department crowding an “unprecedented capacity crisis”.
Financing: $865.5 million in state-issued bonds
On April 23, 2026, the state’s finance agency, MassDevelopment, announced it had issued $865,515,000 in tax-exempt bonds on behalf of Mass General Brigham. J.P. Morgan Securities was the lead underwriter. MassDevelopment said the proceeds will fund the building at 55 Fruit St., a five-story addition at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital in Jamaica Plain, and the refinancing of earlier debt.
The bonds came as MGB’s finances tightened. The system is more than $300 million behind its fiscal 2026 budget, and its operating margin is 0.3%, as reported in our coverage of the latest Mass General Brigham layoffs. MGB has not publicly tied the layoffs to the construction schedule.
What is happening on site now
The two-week look-ahead for Oct. 26 to Nov. 8, 2026 lists bulk excavation, concrete placements, masonry, elevator construction, interior finishes, and mechanical, electrical and plumbing installation by the contractor, Turner-Walsh. Work on the tunnel and bridge connections, including Lunder lobby renovations, is also listed. Utility work on Cambridge and Blossom streets is permitted from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. on weeknights. The notice warns of intermittent sidewalk and lane closures, night paving on Blossom, Parkman and Cambridge streets, and possible odors from excavation and waterproofing.
The Parkman Street Garage, whose spaces the new underground garage will replace, is scheduled for demolition in the second phase. The building also reserves street-level space for an MBTA station headhouse for the proposed Red-Blue Connector, and it keeps the facade of the former Winchell School, later Ruth Sleeper Hall, at Blossom and Parkman streets, the hospital says.
Numbers that differ by source
Published figures don’t all match. Mass General Brigham’s project page lists 1.05 million square feet, while a May 2026 Boston Business Journal tour described 1.8 million square feet and said the first patients would arrive in fall 2027. The independent cost analysis put total spending at about $1.881 billion, slightly above the $1.875 billion in the staff report. The hospital also spells the donors’ first name “Phillip,” while some outlets use “Philip.”
For background on the hospital itself, see our history of Massachusetts General Hospital. If you’re heading to the campus during construction, our Mass General visitor guide to parking and transit covers where to park and how to get there.
Sources
- Mass. DPH, DoN staff report MGB-20121612-HE
- Mass. DPH, memorandum on the 94-bed significant change (2024)
- Mass General Brigham, Ragon Building project page
- MGH construction two-week look-ahead, Oct. 26 to Nov. 8, 2026
- MassDevelopment, April 23, 2026 bond announcement
Additional sources
- Mass.gov, DoN application documents
- Independent cost analysis for the MGH DoN
- MGH, Ragon Building timeline
- WBUR, May 4, 2022
- NBC Boston / Boston Business Journal, 2024
- MGH press release on capacity
- Boston Business Journal, May 11, 2026
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