Hospital To Rise 370 Feet Over Lexington Avenue With Final Vote From City Council

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — In a final vote Thursday, City Council approved a long-fought-over plan to rezone a portion of East 77th Street to expand Northwell's Lenox Hill Hospital.

The proposal's mandatory public review process, which began in April, wrapped up Thursday with a 44-0 vote in favor of the plan. A decision by the City Council is final unless the Mayor vetoes it.

"The renovation will expand the emergency department, upgrade the operating rooms, upgrade the operating and convert all patient rooms to single occupancy, offering patients more privacy and reducing infection," Councilmember Keith Powers said ahead of the vote on Thursday.

"This project was originally proposed years ago at a scale that we objected to, but have worked over the last years to get it to a better place, to deliver more excellent healthcare."

The newly approved plan has a construction time of eight years, including five-and-a-half years of external construction and two-and-a-half years of internal construction.

This timeline is down from the more than nine years previously discussed during the mandatory public review period, which is wrapping up next week with a final City Council vote.

The new plan approved by the Council on Thursday also lowers the tower on Lexington Avenue, as well as East 77th Street and East 76th Street.

The new plan will allow the tower to rise 370 feet tall on Lexington Avenue, and between 180 feet and 235 feet on the numbered streets.

This is an overall reduction from the plans discussed in the mandatory public review process, which kicked off in April.

In one version of the previous construction plans, the building would rise 436 feet over Lexington Avenue but taper down to 195 feet on East 77th Street and East 76th Street. In another discussed plan, the building would come to 395 feet over Lexington Avenue, and drop down to 360 feet over the side streets. Either way, these plans would have had a construction timeline of around nine years.

So far during the mandatory public review process, the City Planning Commission and the Manhattan Borough President voted in favor of the renovation, and Community Board 8 voted 23-15 with two abstentions to reject it.

Before that, the original plan, which was first brought to the community in 2019, had a timeline of around 11 years and a tower height of 516 feet.

"This has been a very disappointing process," Valerie Mason, the chair of Community Board 8, told Patch.

"Of course, our community wants a modern Lenox Hill Hospital, this negotiation has never been about maintaining world-class healthcare on the Upper East Side; it has always been about respecting our City's zoning laws and approving reasonable variances. Our struggle has always been with the out of scale height and mass of Northwell's proposed project and the duration of the construction. The project was out of scale in 2019 and it remains too big in 2025."

With the new plan, the hospital will transform all patient rooms into single-bed rooms, update operating rooms, and add a new center specifically for labor and delivery patients, hospital officials said.

The latest plan also creates an ambulance bay within the building's footprint to reduce traffic on the street, and includes a community benefits package that would pour $25 million into the 77th Street 6 train subway station as well as $2.5 million for neighborhood beautification and tree maintenance.

"This project isn’t about new buildings — it’s about creating a world-class hospital that reflects the excellence, compassion and innovation that New Yorkers deserve," said Michael Dowling, president and CEO of Northwell Health.

"We are dedicated to keeping Lenox Hill Hospital one of the highest-quality hospitals in the country, and we are proud of our commitment to building a healthier future where our patients, our team members and our entire city can thrive."

For questions and tips, email Miranda.Levingston@Patch.com.

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