Huge New Upper East Side Medical Center Revealed By Northwell Health

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — Details about the full-block medical center planned for an Upper East Side block were revealed by Northwell Health during a public meeting on Thursday, more than two years after developers began demolishing the half-dozen buildings that once lined the site.

The 15-story, 194,000-square-foot facility on Third Avenue between East 76th and 77th streets will serve as an outpatient complex with a focus on cancer treatment, as well as cardiac care, neuroscience programs, imaging, a sleep study center and more.

Work will begin around December with the demolition of the last remaining building on the site, Northwell representatives told Community Board 8 this week. A legal dispute with a next-door landlord had held up demolition of the stubby two-story building, as Patch previously reported, but the case was settled in August.

For the first time, Northwell shared renderings of the development this week, showing a glass-fronted building spanning a full block of Third Avenue, atop a brick base.

"We don’t want it to be obtrusive into the community where this building is going to live," said Daniel Baker, the executive director of Lenox Hill Hospital, during Thursday's meeting, adding that it would be "architecturally interesting."

Once demolition wraps up by March 2023, construction would last more than two years, with the 215-foot-tall building set to open by September 2025, Northwell said.

The developer and current owner of the site is the nonprofit University Financing Foundation, which purchased the site in 2018. Once built, Northwell will either become the building's owner or sign a long-term lease, senior vice president John Flanagan said.

Neighbors and board members had few objections to the building's design or the services it will offer. But several speakers pressed Northwell to consider including retail space on the ground floor, which is slated to serve only as a patient welcome area, lounge and loading dock.

"This was, for many years, an important restaurant and local neighborhood retail site," said board member Anthony Cohn, alluding to the bygone businesses like Atlantic Grill, Haru Sushi and Housing Works that once stood there.

Baker, in response, said Northwell had considered retail, but decided that the existing lobby plans were necessary to achieve the hospital's goals of "putting the patient at the center of the design."

Others wondered whether frequent drop-offs at the new facility could hamper traffic along Third Avenue — a common concern surrounding the Upper East Side's numerous medical centers. Northwell representatives said they will ask the city to repurpose several Third Avenue parking spaces as designated drop-off zones, reducing the risk of double-parking.

The new building does not require any zoning changes to be built, meaning Northwell will need no special approvals or need to move through the city's lengthy ULURP process. Still, Flanagan said Northwell had reached out to neighborhood Councilmembers Keith Powers and Julie Menin, as well as other community leaders, to keep them informed about the project.

Flanagan also addressed another elephant in the room: Northwell's long-planned expansion of Lenox Hill Hospital that has been on hiatus since 2020 amid opposition from preservation groups.

"We have every expectation that we will be re-engaging, sooner rather than later ... on the Lenox Hill project," Flanagan said Thursday, saying Northwell was not yet prepared to discuss any specifics.

Northwell, a medical giant and the largest employer in New York state, touted the patient-centric design of the new pavilion, which will separate clinical floors from doctors' offices in order to make exam rooms bigger, Baker said.

The top three floors will host offices for both physicians and clinicians, enabling providers to "actually think and talk together to really improve the outcomes of patient care," Baker said.

Northwell has created a dedicated webpage for the project, known formally as the Northwell Medical Pavilion. Neighbors interested in getting regular updates about the project can email 1345thirdavenue@northwell.edu or call 646-921-1887.

It is one of numerous medical buildings in various stages of planning on the Upper East Side, including the new Extell-Hospital for Special Surgery tower on First Avenue and East 79th Street; the Weil Cornell Medicine dormitory on York Avenue and East 74th Street; and the controversial New York Blood Center headquarters on East 67th Street.

Have an Upper East Side news tip? Contact reporter Nick Garber at nick.garber@patch.com.

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