UMass workforce to grow by 200

Courtesy Renee Mikitarian-Bradley will oversee UMass Memorial Health Care's IT department move to Front Street in downtown Worcester over the next two years.

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By Emily Micucci

For city leaders who have championed downtown redevelopment efforts, UMass Memorial Health Care’s upcoming lease of 75,000 square feet in the Front Street office towers marks major progress toward revitalization.

While officials at the Worcester health care system are also enthusiastic, transitioning UMass Memorial’s large information-technology department to a new location in the midst of a $700-million IT project, will also be a logistical feat.

In addition to relocating existing employees, the system is also going to add 200 new workers, about half of them employees and half of them contract workers, to its IT department, creating a team of about 500 people.

It’s one that Renee Mikitarian-Bradley, senior director of Real Estate for UMass Memorial Health Care, will oversee in the next two years. Within the next two months, the first wave of IT employees will relocate to temporary office space that is available at 90-110 Front St., while the owner of the property conducts a $36-million renovation project at the towers at 100 and 120 Front St.

Currently housed inside an administrative building on Millbrook Street in Worcester, Mikitarian-Bradley said the IT department is running out of space as it on-boards new employees to support the system-wide IT infrastructure upgrade project that UMass Memorial announced this summer. The system is adopting Epic, an electronic health records software solution, across all locations beginning at UMass Memorial Medical Center in Worcester and Marlborough Hospital and Clinton Hospital in July 2017. Meanwhile, the system’s IT infrastructure will be upgraded to become state-of-the-art.

“We have some people walking in the door that need homes,” said Mikitarian-Bradley.

In the end, there will be 500 UMass Memorial employees working on Front Street, and hundreds of those positions will be new, though she didn’t have details on the breakdown of old versus new positions within the IT department.

Next September, the first chunk of UMass Memorial’s permanent office space will be ready for occupancy. The second phase will be completed in December 2017, so employees will move to Front Street in phases. The goal, according to Mikitarian-Bradley, is to cause minimal disruption so the IT project stays on track.

She and UMass Memorial Health Care CEO Dr. Eric Dickson believe the move is well worth the effort. Dickson said in a statement when the lease was announced Monday that “as the city’s largest employer, it is only right that UMass Memorial Health Care is a catalyst in this exciting new redevelopment in downtown Worcester.”

Dickson said, too, that the healthcare system had other options in Worcester and beyond, but “made a conscious decision to be a part of this because we believe in this city and fully support city leaders’ work to improve and enhance the downtown area.”

There’s more to it than that. Mikitarian-Bradley, who has a long history managing real estate in the Worcester area for UMass Memorial and formerly, The Hanover Insurance Group, said a downtown environment is well-suited to IT employees, who spend long days thinking about how software should be implemented for user friendliness and need to get up and walk around once in a while. Heading out for a walk around the block and to grab lunch to go is a nice perk, she said.

While parking is always a concern with a downtown office, the fact that thereis a parking facility serving the towers should ease any worry, Mikitarian-Bradley said.

“They’ll be in this vibrant downtown area that I think they’ll have fun in, quite frankly,” Mikitarian-Bradley said.