Entenmann's donation prompts South Shore hospital to change name

South Shore University Hospital has received the largest donation in its 108-year history and is renaming its 20-acre campus to honor the Entenmann family, which made the gift, Northwell Health said Tuesday.

The Bay Shore property is now called the Entenmann Family Campus at South Shore University Hospital, Northwell said. The campus off East Main Street also includes a helipad, five-story parking garage and other medical buildings.

The health system will add signs reflecting the new name, and it will hold a naming event in the spring, Northwell spokesman Jason Molinet said.

The recent gift exceeds the family’s 2011 donation of $10 million to build the Entenmann Family Cardiac Center at the hospital, but Northwell cannot disclose the exact amount of the recent gift under the terms of the donation, Molinet said.

The donation will support the hospital’s ongoing $500 million expansion, which is to include a new 45,560-square-foot Women & Infants Center, expected to open late next year. The hospital also is adding a pavilion that will include inpatient and operating rooms.

The iconic Entenmann’s baked goods company was founded in 1898 and moved from Brooklyn to Bay Shore in 1900. The family sold the company to pharmaceutical giant Warner-Lambert in 1978 for $233 million. Entenmann’s is now owned by Bimbo Bakeries USA.

"We owe a great deal to the community, and this is our way, as a family, of giving back," said Jaime Padden, 65, a great-granddaughter of company founder William Entenmann, a German-born baker who came to the United States in the late 1800s. People in the Bay Shore and Brentwood communities, she said, "are really who made Entenmann’s bakery so successful."

The family has a long-standing relationship with the hospital and its executive director, Donna Moravick, and the entire extended family supported the donation, Padden said.

Padden said she was born at the hospital, and her late father William Entenmann III chose to be treated there at the end of his life. The hospital, she said, "just means so much to me, especially going through COVID. ... I was in a cocoon for the past year-and-a-half, afraid to leave, but not our doctors and nurses, health care workers, sanitation, everybody."

The family has seen the hospital undergo a transformation over the years, she said. "At one time we'd go into the city to get treatment," she said. "But now there's no need to travel anywhere. We have the best doctors, nurses, everyone, right here."

Northwell is in the midst of a $1 billion fundraising campaign it calls "Outpacing the Impossible," which has raised $890 million since its start in 2018.

The gift "sends a signal to the community that South Shore is on the move," Brian Lally, senior vice president and chief development officer at Northwell, said in an interview. "My expectation and hope is that other people will join the Entenmann family."

By Maura McDermott

maura.mcdermott@newsday.commauramcdermott

Maura McDermott covers education. Since joining Newsday in 2012, she also has worked on the investigations team and covered real estate and the business of health care.