UES Blood Center Rezoning Nears Climactic Hearing Next Week

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — About a year after the New York Blood Center first revealed plans to build a large research tower on the Upper East Side, the controversial proposal is nearing the finish line, with a climactic hearing in the City Council set for next week.

Set for 10 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 20, the public hearing by the Council's zoning subcommittee will give opponents and supporters one last chance to influence Council members before they vote whether to approve or disapprove the rezoning.

That vote will likely come weeks later, near the end of the Council's 50-day window that ends on Nov. 16, a Council source told Patch.

The Blood Center's project aims to replace the nonprofit blood bank's aging headquarters on East 67th Street with a 16-story, 334-foot research tower filled with laboratories, offices and more.

To build it, the Blood Center must persuade the city to rezone the block to allow for more dense construction: a notion that has stoked fierce opposition among neighbors who object to the precedent that would be set by "upzoning" a mid-block site, as well as concerns about shadows the tower would cast on a nearby St. Catherine's Park and the Julia Richman Education Complex (JREC).

Residents seeking to defeat the proposal are mobilizing ahead of Wednesday's, encouraging people to sign up to testify against the Blood Center rezoning.

"We need you now more than ever to save JREC, save the Park, and save the neighborhood," City Councilmember Ben Kallos told constituents in an email.

Kallos has come out strongly against the rezoning, which could doom the project if his Council colleagues defer to his wishes, as they historically have in similar rezonings. But recent reports suggest the tide may be shifting: THE CITY reported last week that some Council members were considering approving the rezoning despite Kallos's opposition.

Kallos, meanwhile, told THE CITY that the Blood Center has rejected a series of compromise proposals, while the Blood Center says it remains open to some kind of deal.

Supporters of the rezoning stepped up their lobbying campaign in recent weeks, describing the project as an economic boon that would create thousands of jobs while boosting the city's life-sciences industry. Backers include labor unions and some community groups, who have cast Blood Center opponents as mostly-white NIMBYs — a characterization those groups reject.

Most recently, the rezoning was approved by the City Planning commission in an 8-2 vote in September. Community Board 8 and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer have both issued recommendations that the project be rejected. Opponents have also noted that the project is helmed by Longfellow, a private developer, which will lease much of the tower's commercial space to private tenants.

"This is your final, and most important, chance to oppose this unprecedented project that would dramatically change the successful contextual midblock zoning," the preservation group Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts wrote in an email to members on Wednesday.

People can submit written testimony up to 72 hours after Wednesday’s hearing at landusetestimony@council.nyc.gov.

This story has been updated to remove a reference to in-person testimony at Wednesday’s meeting. The meeting is entirely virtual.

More Blood Center coverage:

• UES Blood Center Tower OK'd By City Planning, Heads To Council
• Supporters Of Blood Center Tower Step Up Lobbying Ahead Of Vote
• Brewer Rejects UES Blood Center Rezoning, But Battle Continues
• Who Supports The Blood Center's Upper East Side Expansion?
• UES Blood Center Tower Disapproved By Board, Heads To Boro Prez