GREENWICH VILLAGE — The Greenwich Village-Chelsea Chamber of Commerce has thrown its support behind North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System's controversial proposal for medical facilities on the former St. Vincent's site.
Tom Gray, executive director of GVCCC, said the planned Lenox Hill Hospital Comprehensive Care Center would drive much-needed business to area establishments, create jobs and provide medical services.
"The proposed center will have a definite positive effect on local businesses," Gray said, adding that the facilities would also create temporary construction jobs. Project documents filed with the state Department of Health estimate that the center would have 175 full-time employees in its first year and 202 in its third year.
After St. Vincent's Hospital stopped admitting patients and laid off much of its staff in April 2010, more than 30 area businesses were forced to close.
"St Vincent's staff went to places like the Roasting Plant and bought a cup of coffee every single day, I guarantee it. And that changed overnight," Gray said.
Gray said that debates over the value of the proposed 24-hour emergency department, imaging center, ambulatory surgery facility and 24-hour ambulance services versus a full-service hospital pose "a false choice."
"Right now there's no one who's going to bring a hospital to the neighborhood. If [the proposed facilities] don't happen, nothing will happen, and that would be the worst possible scenario," he said.
The Coalition for a New Village hospital, an advocacy group that opposes the Rudin plan, disagrees.
In an Oct. 6 memo to the New York State Public Health and Health Planning Council, the advocacy group argued that the Health Department never issued a request for proposals in which sponsors could indicate interest in a full-service hospital. Such a facility could be built for $125 million, the group said.
"According to leading experts in hospital engineering, for the same or similar cost [as the proposed facility] a smaller 200- to 300-bed hospital could be built," the statement reads.
Gray said opponents of the proposal by North Shore-LIJ, which is a GVCCC member, are a "vocal minority."
"People who support the proposal don't come to community board meetings," he said.
In a video the GVCCC released in late September, supporters made their case for the North Shore-LIJ proposal, approval for which is pending through the Department of City Planning's land use review procedure.
"St Vincent's Medical Site: bringing health care and business back to the Village," a title card at the beginning of the video says.
Steve Rogers of the West Village restaurant Bone Lick Park appeared in GVCCC's video and said the Village needs to be realistic.
"St. Vincent's closed. There's nothing we can do about it, OK?" he said. "[T]he community [needs to] look forward and say, 'That's gone, where do we go from here? How do we make this better for our community?'"
Jesse Campoamor, a member of Community Board 4, which covers Chelsea and Hell's Kitchen, spoke in favor of the North Shore-LIJ proposal in the video.
"This is a good start," he said. "As a community we need to understand what we have and what we can get and move from there."
Gray said he shared the community's need for nearby medical services. He recounted having to travel half an hour from GVCCC's offices in Chelsea to St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital on 59th Street to seek treatment for an employee with a painful kidney stone earlier this year.
"I want to be able to go to this new center and take my employees there," he said.
