New UES Hospital Tower Will Pose Traffic Nightmare, Neighbors Fear

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — The 400-foot medical tower being built on a long-empty Upper East Side block came under scrutiny from neighbors this week, amid fears that it will worsen the neighborhood's already-dire traffic.

The 30-story tower began construction last month on the east side of First Avenue between East 79th and 80th streets, according to a representative from Extell, the developer building it. Its main tenant will be the Hospital for Special Surgery, which will occupy its lower eight floors with outpatient care centers — with the remaining floors being leased for other medical uses.

Since the project was first revealed last fall, however, residents have raised concerns about its potential to snarl traffic, interfere with bus service and take away parking spots, according to members of Community Board 8, which held a meeting devoted to the issue on Wednesday.

"Within the last five years, what used to be a very quiet street ... now has so much traffic that it’s not safe air quality for me to open my windows," said Dana Jacobi, who lives a block away from the construction site and said she has asthma.

Craig Lader, who chairs CB8's transportation committee, worried that the building's main entrance facing First Avenue would clash with the adjacent M15 bus stop, after hospital representatives said they expected patients to be dropped off by taxis on the same corner.

"That's a serious concern because we should never have, ideally, pickups and dropoffs taking place at physical bus stops," Lader said.

In response, representatives from HSS and Extell stressed that the building's main dropoff point will be a separate driveway on a side street, adding that they believed many patients would arrive by public transportation.

They also pointed to a multi-day traffic study they recently conducted on the East 80th Street side of the block, which found that 159 vehicles and 135 pedestrians were counted per hour on weekdays around midday — "pretty low" volumes by Manhattan standards, according to Philip Habib, a transportation planner working on the project.

As for parking, Habib pointed to 47 facilities with a combined 4,356 spaces within a few blocks of the future building.

That did not placate neighbors like Leah Hanlon, who said she often spends more than an hour circling the neighborhood in search of parking spots, and noted that the new building will not contain any of its own.

"You're throwing hundreds of cars a day into our already inadequate neighborhood parking infrastructure and you’re not contributing a single spot," Hanlon said, accusing presenters of showing misleading data.

Neighbor Jeff Mayer, meanwhile, expressed fears that the project would worsen traffic along East 80th Street leading to the FDR Drive, saying drivers headed to the southbound highway are often backed up as far west as York Avenue.

In any case, neighbors have no power to derail the project, which does not require any zoning changes or public review to be built.

Last fall's announcement of the project settled years of speculation about what, if anything, would fill the empty lot, which was home to a set of four-story rowhouses before Extell demolished them all in 2019.

In the ensuing months, residents protested a lack of lighting and rat infestations on the block— forcing Extell to install lights along the construction fence — and the demolition crew was fined by the city last year for safety violations.

Contrary to initial promises by Extell's leadership, the new plans make no room for housing or a school. Instead, the HSS floors will include doctors' offices and treatment centers for musculoskeletal conditions, including radiology and imaging, pre-surgical testing, and physical therapy. The ground floor will include retail space.

Construction, which began May 23 with excavation work, will last until early 2025, according to Extell.

Related coverage:

• Medical Tower To Be Built On Long-Empty Upper East Side Block
• Block-Swallowing UES Mega Development Fined For Safety Violations
• Extell's UES Development Site Is Unsafe: Lawmaker, Seniors Say
• Developer Claims No Clear Plan For Replacing Demolished UES Block
• Entire Upper East Side Block To Be Demolished

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