Herb Chambers Donates $100 Million to Mass General Hospital's Expansion
Nearly everyone has lost friends or family members to cancer. But few people have the financial resources to do something significant about the disease.
Auto magnate Herb Chambers, however, has amassed considerable wealth over the years overseeing his eponymous car dealership group, the largest in New England. And now the self-made billionaire is putting that money to work in the fight against cancer, by making the biggest donation of his life: a $100 million gift to Massachusetts General Hospital, for naming rights to a new tower that will house the hospital’s cancer center.
The gift, announced on Wednesday, will help with the construction costs; it is among the largest-ever donations received by Mass General Brigham, MGH’s parent organization. As a result, MGH will call the East Tower of the Phillip and Susan Ragon Building the Herb Chambers Tower, a nearly 1-million-square-foot structure going up off Cambridge Street as part of the main MGH campus. The hospital plans to consolidate its inpatient and outpatient cancer care in the tower after it’s complete three years from now, along with significant cancer research work.
Chambers, at 83, has seen several friends die of cancer recently, including philanthropist Jack Connors and auto dealer Dave McDermott.
His own success story is already well-known. This kid from modest means in Dorchester launched his copier-selling business in his early 20s, after a stint in the US Navy. He made millions by selling it at age 36, and then used that money to start anew, first by buying a car dealership in New London, Conn., and gradually turning it into the automotive empire it is today.
“Financially, I’ve done well,” Chambers said. “I owe so much to Massachusetts, to the people that are my customers here. They’ve given me whatever I have. ... I want to give back for what I’ve received.”
In recent years, Chambers struck up a friendship with David Brown, president of academic medical centers at Mass General Brigham. As a patient, Chambers said he was already a big fan of MGH and, in his view, its unfailingly courteous and caring employees. Brown took Chambers on a tour in January, giving him a deeper perspective on the hospital, and leaving him even more impressed. Chambers and Brown said the naming rights deal came together a few months ago; MGH kept it under wraps until announcing the donation this week.
If all goes as planned, the new tower will open around the time when Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s long-time oncology partnership with Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a corporate sibling of MGH’s, is due to end in 2028. Dana-Farber said last year that it is leaving that partnership to team up with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center to build a new cancer center in the Longwood Medical Area.
Brown noted that MGH has been planning the $1.9 billion, 2-million-square-foot Ragon Building project for years, long before the Dana-Farber/Brigham divorce was announced. But Brown concedes the project’s timing is serendipitous for MGB. When it opens, the Chambers Tower will feature 228 acute care inpatient beds and 32 intensive care unit beds, and MGB recently announced a new initiative to coordinate cancer care among all its hospitals and clinics. The Chambers Tower will be the home base for that initiative.
Both Brown and Chambers hope that cancer cures will be discovered in the new building, along with medications and therapies that can make it easier to live with cancers that can’t be cured outright.
“I’m thinking that we can make a difference,” Chambers said. “Eventually, there will be a cure for cancer. There has to be.”
