By Albert Amateau
The Rudin Organization and North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System last week outlined the scope of the environmental study for the residential development of the former St. Vincent’s Hospital campus, plus the conversion of the defunct hospital’s O’Toole Building into a free-standing emergency department and comprehensive community medical center.
The June 8 presentation to Community Board 2’s St. Vincent’s Omnibus Committee was preliminary to the City Planning Commission’s June 28 hearing on the scope of the review for the projects slated to replace the bankrupt hospital that closed more than a year ago.
But members of the Coalition for a New Village Hospital repeated their demands that the property become a full-service hospital.
Coalition members heckled the presenters, demanded, “You should be giving us a hospital,” and denounced the Rudin / North Shore-L.I.J. plan as “soulless.”
Yetta Kurland, a founder of the coalition who registered to testify at the meeting, presented a 1-foot-thick stack of 7,000 petitions to a Rudin representative, demanding a full-service hospital.
Despite the interruptions, Brad Hoylman, chairperson of the C.B. 2 St. Vincent’s Omnibus Committee, concluded the two-and-a-half-hour meeting only after everyone who registered had spoken.
Community board members also asked tough questions, but they stuck to the double agenda of the proposed residential project and the O’Toole conversion.
Keen Berger, co-chairperson of the C.B. 2 Social Services and Education Committee, said Rudin’s luxury residential project should figure out “how to get some kind of economic diversity” into the project. Berger suggested there should be 30 percent affordable housing among the up to 450 apartments.
“We know affordability is not part of the project, but we will be focusing on economic diversity and education,” Berger said. “If you are going to add people [to the neighborhood] you have to add an early-childhood center and a middle school,” she added.
David Reck, co-chairperson of the C.B. 2 Land Use and Business Development Committee, was concerned that the zoning proposal for the six-story O’Toole Building included 100,000 additional square feet of development rights.
However, the architect for the project said that North Shore-L.I.J. “has no plans now or in the foreseeable future” to use the rights or to alter the envelope of the O’Toole Building.
Nevertheless, the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission must review the O’Toole project — located in the Greenwich Village Historic District — because it calls for a new main entrance on Seventh Ave., an ambulance entrance on 12th St. and an outpatient entry on 13th St.
The project also includes removing the ceramic tiles from the exterior and reverting to the original concrete front of the building, designed by Albert Ledner for the National Maritime Union in 1961 and acquired by St. Vincent’s in 1973.
Melissa Meyers, land-use attorney for both Rudin and North Shore-L.I.J., noted that the O’Toole conversion on Seventh Ave.’s west side and the residential redevelopment on the avenue’s east side are being reviewed as “separate but parallel” projects.
David Gruber, co-chairperson of the C.B. 2 Institutions Committee, said the 2009 Landmarks Preservation Commission approval of the Rudin residential plan was really contingent on the zoning that would allow the proposed development.
“You’re asking us to rezone to a level that is not ‘as of right,’ but you bought the property in a bankruptcy proceeding without regard to zoning,” Gruber reminded the Rudin representatives.
Meyers replied that Rudin is seeking zoning that would allow a residential redevelopment that is 87,000 square feet smaller than what is now on the former hospital site
“We’re proposing what we think makes sense for a landmarked site,” Meyers said.
But Coalition members were adamantly opposed to the Rudin project and derided the North Shore-L.I.J. medical center.
“It’s not an emergency room,” said Yvette Katz. “I’d rather see nothing. If I had a heart attack I wouldn’t want to go there,” she said. However, cardiac emergencies are among the services included in the proposed center.
Dr. David Kaufman, formerly with St. Vincent’s, suggested that the extra 100,000 square feet of O’Toole development rights that North Shore-L.I.J. does not plan to use should be added to the building.
“It wouldn’t accommodate a 400-bed hospital but it would provide a full-service, 250-bed hospital,” he said.
Kaufman reiterated his previous suggestion that the former St. Vincent’s Coleman Building, proposed for demolition to make way for the residential redevelopment, be preserved for a smaller replacement hospital for St. Vincent’s.
Gil Horowitz tried to tell the meeting that demands for a full-service replacement were “paranoid and delusional” unless there were “a billion dollars” to build it.
“This is a hoax perpetrated by a perpetual candidate for City Council,” Horowitz said, referring to Kurland.
His remarks drew raucous outbursts that Hoylman was barely able to control.
The community board committee is drawing up a response to 20 issues regarding the two projects, including land use, direct and indirect impact on socioeconomic conditions, community services, open space, historic and cultural resources, natural resources, water and sewer infrastructure, sanitation services, transportation, air quality, noise, public health and neighborhood character.
Last month, C.B. 2 sent its response to City Planning on the potential impact of the neighborhood’s other megaproject, the proposal to redevelop New York University’s two superblocks between LaGuardia Place and Mercer St. and Houston and W. Third Sts.
The St. Vincent’s O’Toole development is projected for completion in 2014 and completion of the Rudin residential development is projected for 2015.
Completion of the longer-term N.Y.U. superblocks project is projected over the next 19 years, but the reviews for both projects are to begin within the coming 18 months.
