Lenox Hill Pledges At Least 11 Years Of Work For 400-Plus Foot Tower

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — A plan to expand Lenox Hill hospital's footprint drew more than 220 Upper East Siders to an hours-long community board zoning meeting Tuesday night.

The project, a rehash of an abandoned 2020 expansion plan, will aim to modernize and upgrade many parts of the hospital on East 77th Street between Lexington and Park avenues, which Northwell Health representatives said are far below current industry standards.

Northwell Health’s senior vice president for government affairs John Flanagan called the project "a nominal increase according to need."

But Upper East Siders looked at the project — which would add nearly 640,000 square feet to the hospital, a thick, 436-foot-tall tower on narrow Lexington Avenue and only 25 new beds over the 11 years of construction — with derision.

"Basically, this is a vanity project," said a resident named Stacy.

During the four-hour-long meeting, residents such as Stacy angrily sounded off on the bulky plan to construct a new massive tower, which would be one of the tallest hospital buildings in the city, along the relatively narrow Lexington Avenue in a neighborhood teeming with medical facilities and major hospitals.

“Nobody wants it that big. It’s too much bulk. It’s too much area. It’s too high. It’s too everything. Nobody wants it. That’s what this comes down to,” said community board member Michelle Birnbaum.

Additionally, residents were irate to hear that the project would take over a decade to construct, caused in part, Northwell said, by the need to keep the hospital open during construction.

CB8 member Edward Hartzog wondered why the hospital couldn't relocate care to satellite facilities to reduce the duration of construction, which Northwell currently estimates will last at least 11 years.

"You seem to have so many satellite locations around the city," Hartzog said. "Even the Yankees played in Shea Stadium for two years."

"Hospitals are not hotels"

Stephanie Reckler, who leads one of the groups opposed to the project since it was first proposed over three years ago, The Committee to Protect Our Lenox Hill Neighborhood, told Northwell that they've only considered "the health of the patient [but] you haven't given any consideration to the health of the community, the livability of the community."

"I am in favor of leveling the whole site and putting up whatever hospital you want to put up that is a better size and fit for all," Reckler said.

Northwell presented the project, which would require a rezoning of a portion of the block, as a necessary upgrade to the current patchwork of numerous aged buildings filled with undersized and overcapacity facilities on the site.

The new building, Northwell said, would upgrade operating rooms and emergency treatment facilities to modern industry standards, expand the emergency medicine capacity and convert all of its inpatient rooms to single-bed rooms. Currently, two-thirds of the hospital's patient rooms are shared rooms.

Those new rooms? At 345 square feet, they would be larger than the average city hotel room and larger than many studio apartments, including former City Council Speaker Corey Johnson's 319-square-foot downtown apartment.

"Hospitals are not hotels," Reckler said, "they're to fix you up to get you out quickly. And that is the good experience."

Is bigger clinically better?

Community Eight Board Member Elizabeth Rose asked if single rooms are reimbursed by Medicare — and other insurers — at different rates.

While Daniel Baker, the executive director of Lenox and a doctor of emergency medicine, said that insurance reimbursements are unaffected, he added that hospitals can place "an additional charge which is outside the insurance payment model."

Rose also questioned if the project would actually result in improved patient outcomes.

"There is a difference between we need this space because it will make people have a better experience in the hospital," Rose said, "and we need this space because it will change the outcome of the medical care."

"The increase in the scale of this building is disproportionate to the improvement in medical outcomes that will result," she said.

Baker said he was "of the mindset that it does actually change outcomes" clinically.

But the plan, which already reduced the height of the Lexington Avenue tower by 80 feet and nixed a controversial Park Avenue condo building after community pushback in 2020, would only add 25 new patient beds despite the addition of over 600,000 square feet of hospital space.

That means the tower's thick, chunky floor plate, which many noted at Tuesday's meeting, would be as large as some of the biggest midtown office buildings in the middle of a mostly residential neighborhood.

"The proposed building is in line with floor plates of several other large scale commercial buildings in commercially zoned neighborhoods," said the displeased neighbor Stacy.

She also noted the trend of routine medical care leaving the traditional hospital and towards ambulatory care facilities.

"Just because you've been here doesn't mean you need to stay here," Stacy said.

The new Lexington Avenue tower, at a proposed 436 feet, would be higher than the other massively tall medical facilities in the neighborhood located near the FDR Drive, like the recently constructed David H. Koch Center for Cancer Care at Memorial Sloan Kettering which sits at 416 feet, according to their certificate of occupancy.

'That's what we are saying we don't like'

Many wondered why the hospital, which owns the entire block between Lexington and Park Avenues from East 76th to 77th Streets, couldn't build the taller portion along the notoriously double-wide and wealthier Park Avenue.

"Why not spread the new construction across both parts of the parcel, which would result in lower height across on the Lexington Avenue side?" asked Rose. "Why not affect both parts of the project equally?"

Baker said that while he understood the concern, the issue was "about the operation of the facility while we continue to construct," which means leaving the Park Avenue side largely undisturbed.

And, Baker added, the buildings near Lexington Avenue are the most aged, with some dating back to the 19th century.

Anthony Cohn, co-chair of the Community Board Eight rezoning committee, hinted that this decision, to keep the hospital operational, could be the root of the community qualms.

"What you are hearing from the community is that your commitment to maintaining full operations of the Lenox Hill Hospital through out the 11 years of construction has hamstrung your design to the point where you have had to dump all of the new construction onto Lexington Avenue," Cohn told the team from Northwell.

"And it is that operational component that in fact is driving the entire project. That's what we are saying we don't like."

Related coverage from Upper East Side Patch:

• Northwell Makes Moves On Lenox Hill Hospital Expansion
• Lenox Hill Expansion Opponents Unmoved By Hospital's Concessions
• Controversial Tower Nixed In New Lenox Hill Expansion Plan
• Lenox Hill Hospital Expansion Battle Resumes After Pandemic Pause
• BP Hopes Lenox Hill, Neighbors Reach Consensus On Expansion
• Thousands Sign Petition Against Lenox Hill Hospital Expansion