All smiles. (PMcM)

Earlier this afternoon, a die-hard group of developers, activists and real estate enthusiasts gathered at the New York Department of City Planning for a much anticipated meeting. In a brief meeting, the controversial Rudin development project at the former site of St. Vincent's Hospital passed with unanimous support from all City Planning commissioners.

Commission Chair Amanda Burden explained that she was pleased with how the developers had worked with the community. "The Rudin West Village proposal represents an important step in incorporating the former St. Vincent's campus into the fabric of the West Village," Ms. Burden said.

Commissioner Angela Battaglia similarly voiced her support of the project, but encouraged Rudin to continue searching for a way to include an affordable housing program into the massive real estate endeavor.

After the meeting, Mr. Rudin spoke to a bevy of reporters, most of whom were curious about the affordable housing angle Commissioner Battaglia had mentioned. "I'm not exactly sure, there were a couple of different comments, and I think we need to see what their report was," Mr. Rudin said. "Maybe after we’ve read it we can comment on it."

Mr. Rudin explained that the development project will create "a revitalized neighborhood with jobs being created and stores being refilled." In addition to condos and a park, the new space will include *an urgent care clinic with exactly two hospital beds.

As Mr. Rudin was speaking to the press, several opponents of the project gathered behind him, with signs reading "Shame! Shame!" and "City Planners to The West Side: Drop Dead."

The vociferous activists argued that without a fully-operational hospital, complete with in-patient care and Level 4 trauma facilities, the West Side of Manhattan would be put in dire straits. "There's a very large disparity of hospital beds and this isn’t being addressed by the plan," said Dr. Gerrie Nussdorf. "There’s a change in health care where these freestanding clinics are somehow taken as being equal to hospitals." The urgent care center, she said, is "kind of a band-aid: it can help certain things if they’re not so serious, but for serious things people need to be transported to a hospital."

Another opponent, Timothy Lunceford, told The Observer that despite the planning commission's statements, the Rudins have not worked with the community. "I'm telling you the commission did not tell the truth today," he said. "Bill Rudin has not told the truth any time he's presented to the board about working with the community."

Mr. Rudin told the assembled reporters that *financing is completely in order for the project, and it will be completed sometime in 2015.

eknutsen@observer.com

Village green. (Architizer)

Is a tiny triangle in Greenwich Village the next 9/11 Memorial? That's what a pair of local activists are hoping, with their plan to turn a patch of land across from the old St. Vincent's hospital into the city's first AIDS memorial. They have even signed up Michael Arad, designer of the ground zero mecca, to lead a design competition for the project.

"The design process that happened after the events of 9/11... catalyzed this citywide discussion about an important historic event, and we think this design competition can do something similar," Paul Kelterborn said in a video posted by the competition sponsors, Architizer and Architectural Record.

The hope is to turn the old triangle at Seventh Avenue and West 12th Street into a new memorial. As part of Rudin Management's plans to convert the old hospital complex into a condo development, the august real estate family has promised to turn the 16,000-square-foot triangle plot, formerly home to storage and maintenance facilities for St. Vincent's, into a park. Even if it does not like the new condos, the community welcomes the new open space, though it has quibbled over the particular designs for the park.

From ambulence parking to AIDS park. (Architizer)

It remains to be seen whether the Rudins would support the memorial plan, though the developer has been willing to make some concessions to the community thus far, such as building a new school in a former St. Vincent's building.

The designers behind the competition hope to convince them, as they view this as a rare opportunity to create a memorial in what was the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic. Not only has the Village always been strongly associated with gay culture and the equal rights movement, but St. Vincent's set up the first and most extensive AIDS ward in the city.

"There really won't be an opportunity to design another important public space in Lower Manhattan, Christopher Tepper said. "This site is particularly important because there's an opportunity here that doesn't come around very often."

The competition calls for a design that does in fact resemble the plans for the 9/11 Memorial a good deal. A park would be located at street level, while the existing below-ground space at the plot would be turned into the AIDS memorial.

How exactly this would be achieved is up to the designers participating in the competition. In addition to Mr. Arad, the competition has drawn a number of other high profile jurors, including Richard Meier, Kurt Anderson, landscape architect Ken Smith and High Line collaborators Robert Hammond (co-creator) and Elizabeth Diller (architect).

Submissions are due by January 21, with a win expected in the spring. The big question, then, is if the organizers can mount the kind of political support both the High Line and the 9/11 Memorial achieved in that short span of time.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

Among the challenges is whether or not Bill Rudin can reach a deal with St. Vincent's creditors to buy the project for less than the $300 million Rudin Management first offered the hospital. There is also the threat of rival bidders, as The Journal notes:

Mr. Rudin has a clear advantage. He owns the plans that he spent three years preparing and getting approved by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, a contentious process involving preservationists and neighborhood groups. A new buyer would have to start from square one.

Yet Rudin might have to start from square one, as well. The only firm authorized to tear down the landmarked O'Toole Building is St. Vincent's, for the purposes of building its new hospital. With the hospital gone, were anyone else to try and tear down O'Toole, they would have to seek approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which would almost certainly refuse. It only gave St. Vincent's the necessary approvals after it filed a hardship application arguing it had no choice but to demolish Alber C. Ledner's former Maritime Union headquarters, dubbed by some the overbite building for its distinct facade.

This does not mean Rudin could not still buy the old pieces of St. Vincent's and develop them as the 450-unit luxury apartment complex the developer initially envisioned. That said, there could be no changes to the originally approved plans. The bigger challenge, though, would be convincing the community to support such outsized buildings without a medical facility attached. Were one to be included somewhere in the Rudin complex, this, too, would likely trigger another review by the commission.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

St. Vincent's, the storied hospital that, since its founding in the 19th century, has been intimately entwined with the New York story, has, for the first time since it declared bankruptcy on April 14, put a piece of its downtown Manhattan portfolio on the block, reports the Times.

The building in question is 555 Avenue of the Americas, arguably one of Manhattan's ugliest apartment buildings (the sun-dappled picture to the right in no way does it justice):

Grubb & Ellis, a brokerage, is expected to release the marketing materials on Monday morning to sell the property at 555 Avenue of the Americas, which is known as Staff House. The property, near 15th Street, is a 180,000-square-foot building with 178 apartments, a 90-car parking garage and potential store space along the avenue.

Aesthetics aside, the building already has a very interested buyer:

St. Vincent's, which has informally been trying to sell this building for several years, already has one offer; the commercial property owner Taconic Investment Partners signed a contract on Wednesday to buy the building for $48 million. That means any other prospective bidder would have to offer more than $49.37 million, when taking in account all other fees, court documents say.

More here.

drubinstein@observer.com

The plan isn’t moving quickly.

Monday—the day before the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission was planning to do a final vote on the proposal—a group of preservationists filed a lawsuit against the city and St. Vincent’s in an attempt to block the destruction of the O’Toole Building, the demolition of which is integral to the hospital’s plan.

At issue is whether, by law, St. Vincent’s is allowed to demolish the building, which sits on the planned site for its new hospital. In the suit, the preservationists claim that indeed the LPC was not allowed to grant St. Vincent’s permission to demolish the O’Toole Building—which they did in October, after St. Vincent’s said that leaving the building in place would impose a financial hardship. While the LPC is allowed to permit landlords to demolish landmarks on account of financial hardship, the preservationists say in their suit that St. Vincent's did not fit the legal definition of “hardship.”

“The test … is ‘where maintenance of the landmark either physically or financially prevents or seriously interferes with the carrying out of the owner’s charitable purpose,’” the suit says. “The facility is currently being used, and can continue to be used, for ‘its originally expected use’ as an outpatient facility and for doctors’ offices, and St. Vincent’s has not claimed (nor could it) that the maintenance involves a financial hardship. As a result, the constitutional hardship test that would permit demolition of the O’Toole Building is not, and has not been, met. Whatever hardship, if any, St. Vincent’s faces, it is not caused by the O’Toole Building.”

Even if the hospital does make it through the LPC process, lawsuit and all, it still has to undergo a rezoning process, which entails a lengthy public review.

Update: 12:50 p.m.

Statement from St. Vincent's:

Sadly, this lawsuit seeks to prevent St. Vincent's from building a modern medical facility to serve Manhattan's West Side and improve healthcare for thousands of New Yorkers. St. Vincent's has taken every step possible to work with the City and local community -- and we will continue to do so -- in order to create a new hospital that will best accommodate the patients we proudly serve and the needs of Village residents.

Suit below.

Pvhd Petition

The buildings, which create a new “Lamartine Place” historic district, run from 333 to 359 West 29^th Street, between Eighth and Ninth avenues. Neighbors in the area have devoted considerable attention to the buildings, particularly as the owner of one of them, 339 West 29^th Street, was planning a rooftop addition (landmark status would make such an alteration far more difficult to complete, and any addition would likely have to be contextual).

The properties were also part of the 1863 Civil War Draft Riots, when New Yokers took to the streets in protest of the draft, burning houses and fighting the police.

From the commission’s staff summary:

Also up for landmarking, per the commission's agenda: the La Mama Experimental Theater at 74 East 4^th Street; two buildings on West 56^th Street; two libraries in the Bronx; and a few other houses in Manhattan.

Early in the day at the landmarks hearing, the never-ending saga that is the proposed new St. Vincent’s West Village hospital comes before the commission. The hospital is expected to present plans for its new building on the site of the O’Toole building.

The approval was a critical one, and removes a hurdle to the development of the new hospital building on 12^th Street and Seventh Avenue, along with a new housing complex built by Rudin Management in the spot of the existing hospital. The hospital would still need more approvals from the commission to move forward with its plans, followed by a lengthy public approval process for a rezoning.

Update: 1:25 p.m.

A community group opposed to the plan, Protect the Village Historic District, just sent over a statement to say it would appeal the ruling, which it considers illegal. "The Commission's ruling would not only do great damage to the Greenwich Village Historic District – it would open historic districts across the City to similar destructive inroads," PVHD chair Tom Molner said in the statement. 

Statements below.

From Protect the Village Historic District:

Dr. George Neuman, the interim chief medical officer at St. Vincent Catholic Medical Center, said that “support for the new hospital among the doctors and nurses, maintenance and ancillary staff is universal.”

“The people here want to see a new hospital built,” he said. “When you think about it, who wouldn’t want to work in a new building?"

Dr. Neuman said some nurses—one of the critics we spoke with Tuesday worked for the operating division—are using the controversy over the O’Toole building as leverage in negotiations over new contracts.

To clarify, in addition to three nurses, we also spoke with a cafeteria worker and an employee from the Environmental Department who opposed the plan for a new hospital.

A lab technician and two union representatives were enthusiastic, while an administrator told us she supports the construction of a new hospital, but said “they might be being a little overzealous about tearing down O’Toole.”

Dr. Neuman said St. Vincent’s medical staff has increased over the last three or four years, contrary to what one employee told us, and the hospital currently has 1,000 doctors on staff and about “20 or 30 administrators.”

If the LPC approves St. Vincent’s hardship application, the center expects to get full City Planning approval late next year (at the earliest), in which case demolition would start in 2010. If all goes well, a new hospital could be built by 2014.

A host of elected officials today--City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Senator Thomas K. Duane, and Congressman Jerrold Nadler--gave their blessings to a demolition of the O'Toole building at 12th Street and Seventh Avenue in order to make way for a new St. Vincent's hospital in its place, should the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission find the hospital faces sufficient "hardship."

By issuing statements or speaking at a hearing today, the officials voiced support for Rudin Management's modifications to the original, $1.6 billion proposal, but warned that more revisions responding to community concerns about construction, building height and density, and how to mitigate shadows and traffic cast on the neighborhood, would be needed should the proposal reach the public review phase.

Some in the audience were not so pleased.

"I wish I hadn't voted for you," a man shouted at Mr. Duane.

"Show some leadership," another screamed.

Mr. Duane was ultimately booed off the stage.

"The application materials make it clear that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find any location as suitable as the O'Toole site for the hospital's modernization," Mr. Stringer said in prepared testimony. "Unless a similarly situated site can be located, it seems that this is exactly the sort of situation for which the hardship waiver exists, which is to allow rare exceptions to the landmark protections when an applicant cannot satisfy its long-term mission within those constraints."

However, based on conversations we had with a random sampling of hospital workers, it seems the bulk of the St. Vincent's staff who actually support the hospital's proposal to demolish the O'Toole building and construct a towering, new facility in its place are the ones who work in it.

The majority of St. Vincent's medical staff who work across the street from O'Toole appeared to echo the sentiments shared by the residents, community groups, and preservationists, who testified this morning at the last scheduled public meeting of the LPC on the issue. The LPC denied an intial request to demolish the O'Toole site, among others, but now is considering the hospital's hardship application.

But the consensus among nurses and techs at St. Vincent's and the neighborhood residents attending the meeting seems to be that a new building will not solve the endemic management issues plaguing what is now the city's last remaining West Side hospital below 59^th Street.

"I work in there," said one operating nurse, "and building a whole new building is not going to solve the problems inside."

The hospital is desperately in need of renovation, she said. The elevators constantly break down and the facilities are both antiquated and overstretched, but the overarching issues are "basic."

"Sure we need new technology, but we don't even have enough stretchers," she said. "Sometimes, we'll finish an operation and won't even be able to move people because all the stretchers are being used."

Many of the doctors at St. Vincent's have been on staff for 20 or 30 years, she said, but turnover is high, because "they see how things work and run."

Another employee said the priority should be "bringing the staff census up," before building a new hospital, and proponents of St. Vincent's hardship application to build on the site of the O'Toole building argue that a new, state-of-the-art hospital would do just that.

"We're being squeezed, downsized, and overworked from every angle," he said.

The Municipal Art Society, which also testified at the hearing, issued the following statement in reaction to St. Vincent's application:

New York, NY, June 3, 2008 — The Municipal Art Society today called for the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) to review rigorously the hardship application submitted by St. Vincent’s hospital to demolish the O’Toole building.

Constructed in 1961 to the design of Albert Ledner for the National Maritime Union, the O’Toole building is a mid-twentieth century modern landmark in the heart of the Greenwich Village Historic District. St. Vincent’s acquired the building in 1973 and has used it for outpatient clinics and offices. Last month, the LPC rejected St. Vincent’s application to demolish the building for the construction of a new hospital facility on the site. The hospital has since applied under the hardship provision of the Landmarks Law to move forward with the demolition and new construction.

“The hardship provision of the Landmarks Law is an important tool that ensures that maintaining a landmark to the standards of the Landmarks Preservation Commission does not cause undue hardship for owners,” stated Melissa Baldock, Kress/RFR Fellow for Historic Preservation and Public Policy at the Municipal Art Society, “We urge the Landmarks Preservation Commission to review rigorously the hardship application filed by St. Vincent’s to demolish the O’Toole building.”

In the past, the hardship provision has been reserved for exceptional cases in which owners have not been able to find a way to successfully use and adapt their buildings within the LPC’s regulations of appropriateness. Baldock noted, “In the 43 years of the Landmarks Law, the provision has only been invoked 16 times prior to this application by St. Vincent’s hospital, and the last time a hardship application was filed was in 1989.”

For a non-profit organizations like St. Vincent’s, the courts have determined that under the hardship provision, the LPC must examine whether the “maintenance of the landmark either physically or financially prevents or seriously interferes with carrying out the charitable purpose” of the owner.

The Municipal Art Society called for the LPC to explore in the hardship proceedings all of the avenues that would enable the O’Toole building to be preserved. After its initial analysis of the hardship filing, MAS felt that more options need to be explored in the fulfillment of the hardship process before the LPC can determine whether or not O’Toole can be demolished. MAS is calling upon the LPC to hire experts to help the agency analyze the spatial needs and economic issues of the hospital and look at alternatives to demolition.

As part of its effort to construct a new hospital, St. Vincent’s is selling its property on the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 11^th and 12^th Streets where the hospital is currently located. The current proposal involves selling the property to the Rudin family, who plan to develop the site for residential use. The original proposal for the residential development asked the LPC for permission to demolish all eight of the existing St. Vincent’s buildings on the east side of Seventh Avenue. However, the LPC encouraged to the Rudins to revise their proposal so as to incorporate the preservation of four historic buildings on the site, while leaving room for new construction. The current proposal, also considered by the LPC today, involves a mixture of renovated historic buildings and new construction.

“MAS is pleased that the revised Rudin proposal incorporates four of the existing St. Vincent’s buildings,” Baldock said, “However, we believe that the details and the specifics of the development need more thought before the project can be determined appropriate for the Greenwich Village Historic District.”