WEST VILLAGE — The health center that replaced St. Vincent's Hospital is changing its name to lay claim to its neighborhood, according to a spokeswoman.
Lenox Hill HealthPlex, part of the North Shore-LIJ hospital system, opened on Seventh Avenue in July of 2014 across the street from the site where St. Vincent's stood for decades before its closure in 2010.
Under an agreement between the North Shore-LIJ Health Systen and Healthplex, Inc., a dental plan administrator, the six-story Lenox Hill HealthPlex will be renamed "Lenox Health Greenwich Village."
Healthplex, Inc., has no relationship to the health center at 30 Seventh Ave., a North Shore-LIJ spokesman said, but had taken issue with the facility's name, insisting it was an infringement on their own.
"Rather than have protracted litigation, we just decided to change the name voluntarily," said spokesman Terence Lynam. "We were looking to rebrand anyway."
Lynam said the name change has already been approved by the New York State Department of Health, and new signage was approved by the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Neither agency responded to inquiries.
The HealthPlex claimed to be the first and only freestanding emergency medical facility in Manhattan because it was more sophisticated than an urgent care center, though it lacked the capacity to take in Level 1 Trauma victims. Those victims — people with gunshot wounds or in severe cardiac arrest, for example — would need to be transported to Bellevue Hospital about two miles away on the east side.
The new sign is expected to "go up sometime in July," Lynam said.
