MSK Set To Demolish 300-Plus Unit Building For New Tower

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — If you live in Lenox Hill near York Avenue, you may soon hear the sounds of over 300 apartments disappearing from the neighborhood, to be replaced by a mega-tall cancer center.

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center filed demolition plans this week to begin the work of taking down an MSK-owned, 308-unit residential building currently at the site of their future nearly 600-foot-tall medical tower at 1233 York Ave., between East 66th and 67th streets.

The tower, called the MSK Pavilion, will total nearly 1 million square feet, with 28 operating suites and 202 inpatient beds, according to zoning documents. It will sit squarely across the street to their current main hospital building and will be connected by a skybridge.

According to the demolition permit, the 270-foot-tall residence, which housed staff, medical and doctoral students for the hospital and Weill Cornell Medical Center, is currently unoccupied.

After the story was originally published, an MSK spokesperson said that the center "offered housing to all residents within our existing housing portfolio and all of those offers have been accepted."

The permit states the demolition is estimated to cost MSK over $1.57 million.

When MSK presented their plans for the new medical tower last year, many Community Board 8 board members spoke out in support of the plans, comparing it favorably to the proposal of another massive hospital tower planned on Lexington Avenue.

Both of the two proposals require massive rezonings to allow for the projects to continue.

Many of those same supportive members also raised concerns that the demolition of the roughly 300 apartments would increase pressure on the already overheated housing market in the neighborhood.

"Where are those people going?" asked board member Anthony Cohn at the meeting last March.

Over the following summer, Community Board 8 held a number of MSK Task Force meetings with representatives from the hospital, raising concerns about disruption to P.S. 183 — a school located just two buildings over on the same block — housing, the building's height, parking, shadows and a bevy of other issues.

MSK officials told the board that the hospital has invested in 200 additional housing units on Roosevelt Island, and that Weill Cornell has plans to build new, 272-unit medical student housing just blocks away.

In the final resolution of the task force, the board asked that MSK, among other things, replace "all housing" on the current site with new housing units in the neighborhood.

According to MSK's zoning application, the proposal could be certified by the city's planning commission within the next 30 days.

After the city certifies the proposal, the project formally enters the land-use review process, which includes community, city council, borough president and mayoral approvals.

MSK is currently scheduled to present to Community Board 8 on April 24.