After its plans received an emphatic “no” from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission earlier this month, St. Vincent’s hospital is coming back with a slightly revised plan to build in the historic West Village a new medical center coupled with a residential development by Rudin Management.
The Landmarks Commission sent back the plans, saying that it could not support the demolition of so many buildings within the historic district.
Now, St. Vincent’s has submitted an application pleading hardship, a claim that the hospital hopes will receive a more sympathetic response from the commissioners.
Likely to be an issue is the modernist O’Toole Building, a structure at 12th Street and Seventh Avenue slated for demolition to make way for the new hospital. All of the commissioners said earlier this month that they could not support such a demolition.
Changes to the plan include reductions in height, and the preservation of some buildings that were once set to meet the wrecking ball.
[Article adjusted].
Press release from St. Vincent’s below.
ST. VINCENT’S/RUDIN FAMILY UNVEIL REVISED PLANS TO BUILD STATE-OF-THE-ART GREENWICH VILLAGE HOSPITAL
New proposal would preserve four buildings within historic district; significantly reduces height and bulk
(NEW YORK) – Moving forward with plans to offer New Yorkers a 21st Century, state-of-the-art healthcare facility, Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers and the Rudin Family today filed a revised plan with the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) that makes significant modifications based on feedback from LPC, elected officials and the Greenwich Village community.
“In our many months of discussions with the Landmarks Preservation Commission and the Greenwich Village community, we received a number of helpful comments pointing to the great desire for a state-of-the-art hospital, but concern about the configuration of our original project – we feel this new proposal fully meets those desires and addresses those concerns,” said Henry Amoroso, President and CEO of Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers. “We now look forward to resubmitting our application with LPC and moving forward with our plans to build a 21st Century, green hospital that will provide top-of-the-line healthcare to those who live, work and visit the West Side of Manhattan.”
Changes from the original proposal include:
- The historic preservation, renovation and adaptive reuse of four buildings East of Seventh Avenue and within the existing St. Vincent’s campus (Nurses, Raskob, Smith, Spellman);
- On the East Side of Seventh Avenue, a reduction of 30 feet in height and 60 feet in width–reducing the width of the building by nearly a third–of the main residential building proposed by the Rudins on 7th Avenue between 11th and 12th Streets;
- A reduction of 9 percent on the height of the proposed hospital bringing the total height below 300 feet including mechanicals, as well as reducing the width of the tower by 53 feet.
- In addition to these changes to its existing applications, the St. Vincent’s/Rudin revised submission to LPC will include a new application seeking demolition of the O’Toole Building on the grounds of hardship rather than on grounds of insufficient architectural merit, as requested by some preservation groups.
“From the beginning of this process, the Rudin Family has been firmly committed to helping St. Vincent’s realize its vitally important mission of building a new hospital for the City of New York,” said William C. Rudin, President of Rudin Management Company. “We are proud to have reconfigured our plans in a way that both pushes this critical project forward and addresses the concerns raised by LPC, elected officials and the community.”
The new hospital—the first to be built in New York City in 20 years—will feature many of the latest technological advances to improve healthcare efficiency.
It will make use of the latest in medical information technology to maintain patient records, diagnostic test results and radiological images electronically — patient information will be securely available to physicians not only within the confines of the hospital, but also at their offices and other remote sites. The new hospital also will include state-of-the-art operating suites designed specifically to incorporate and take advantage of sophisticated image-guided and laparoscopic surgery.
News of the revised projects comes just more a week after the Department of Education announced that the Rudin Family—in direct response to community input—facilitated an agreement between the School Construction Authority and the Foundling Hospital to provide more than 560 new classroom seats for elementary school students from Greenwich Village and surrounding areas.
