MANHATTAN — Greenwich Village moved one step closer on Tuesday to a proposed new medical facility on the former St. Vincent's Medical Center campus.
The city's Landmarks Preservation Commission unanimously approved North Shore-Long Island Jewish Hospital's plan to build a medical complex in the distinctive O'Toole Building, formerly of St. Vincent's Medical Center, in a Tuesday vote.
“It’s a felicitous conclusion,” LPC Chair Robert Tierney said at the meeting, according to a statement. “The proposal will allow the building to be restored intact and function as a health care facility and not detract from the character of the district. I enthusiastically support this application.”
The approved plan calls for an emergency walk-in entrance on Seventh Avenue, an ambulatory care entrance on West 13th Street and an ambulance entrance on West 12th Street. The plan also adds signs, replaces an existing seven-foot fence with a fence shorter than three feet, restores granite curbs at the ground floor plaza and removes the tile finish from the building to return the facade to its original white-painted concrete finish.
But the news was "disappointing" to opponents of the proposed medical facility, who maintain that the planned new center falls far short of what the community needs.
"The community has continually raised very serious concerns about the proposed healthcare facility and it is unfortunate that those concerns have not been responded to by the city or the state," said Yetta Kurland, a civil rights attorney who represents the group the Coalition for a New Village Hospital, which has been pressing the city and the developers Rudin Management to create a development plan that allows room for a full-service hospital.
"Just because the Rudins are able to push through these development plans ... is in no way an indication of community support," she added.
Kurland said the coalition has presented "very reasonable" alternatives to the current plan, which include leaving more room for medical facilities and slightly less for private development.
"We simply want a healthcare facility that meets the needs of the community ... this facility is not going to meet those needs."
The white Modernist building on Seventh Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets was finished in 1963 and was originally used as the headquarters of the National Maritime Union.
North Shore-LIJ plans to convert the O'Toole Building into a medical complex containing a 24/7 emergency department, full-service imaging center and outpatient surgery facility.
Other buildings on the former St. Vincent's campus are slated to be developed into apartment complexes.
Rudin Management, St. Vincent's development partner, praised the vote.
“Today’s vote is further recognition that the North Shore-LIJ Comprehensive Care Center is not only the best plan to bring health care back to the West Side, but the right one for the neighborhood,” Bill Rudin told the New York Observer. “Along with our LPC-approved residential development, new open space and a public school, this plan preserves the heart and character of the West Village community.”
Before the plan can move into the final stages, it will have to secure the approval of the City Planning Commission, which has to weigh in on development plans, and the Attorney General, who has to decide whether the St. Vincent's campus, formerly the site of a nonprofit entity, can be cleared for private, for-profit development.
