Hospital wings are usually named for people who have donated a substantial amount of money. But a major portion of Montefiore’s main campus was named in 2006 for someone who transformed the institution over two decades as its president, Spencer Foreman, MD.

Foreman, who officially retires on Jan. 6, 2008, presided over two decades of growth for Montefiore, the largest private employer in the Bronx. He is widely known for stewarding the vast expansion of Montefiore’s medical services such as the Children’s Hospital and a full-service community care system in 30 health centers in the Bronx and Westchester.

But Foreman also made his mark in an area not usually associated with hospital executives – community development.

Early on in his tenure, he made it clear that the community’s viability was connected to the hospital’s and vice versa.

“Large, successful businesses have a responsibility to improve the world in which they prosper,” Foreman said in a 2006 interview with the Norwood News. “Corporate philanthropy, corporate involvement, is very much a part of the great American tradition.”

Foreman said that fostering community improvements in the area surrounding Montefiore are a “two-fer” – they benefit the Medical Center and its staff and patients, and also the neighborhood as a whole.

“Having a neighborhood which looks good and feels good is very much in the institution’s own best interest,” Foreman said. “If the place is in good repair, and is orderly, clean and safe, people want to come here. If the neighborhood is a wreck, they don’t.”

Foreman was an active member of the board of Mosholu Preservation Corporation (MPC), a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore which publishes the Norwood News. He supported MPC’s efforts to move beyond the renovation of the derelict buildings to include graffiti removal as well as the eventual creation of the paper and the Jerome-Gun Hill Business Improvement District.

He also was a key supporter of MPC’s efforts to renovate the historic Keeper’s House on Reservoir Oval and other conversions of dilapidated area buildings to community uses.

Foreman brokered the deal between the New York Botanical Garden and Fordham University to end a decade-old battle over a half-built radio tower on Fordham campus. Fordham offered the roof of a Montefiore apartment building, where the tower now sits. That development preceded an ongoing collaboration among the three nonprofits and the Bronx Zoo to beautify and enhance the thoroughfares leading to the institutions.

In November, Montefiore’s board of trustees named Steven M. Safyer, MD, as Foreman’s successor. Safyer has been senior vice president and chief medical officer at Montefiore since 1998.