Plans to modernize Northwell Lenox Hill Hospital are crucial to preserving the city’s global leadership in medicine; the City Council should OK the proposal ASAP.
As the City Planning Commission voted its approval of the $2 billion project last month, Chairman Dan Garodnick flagged the vital imperative “to ensure the city’s health-care infrastructure is able to meet evolving needs, provide excellent care and remain competitive to attract and retain talent.”
Expanding this Upper East Side hospital forwards all those goods.
Indeed, with an eye on meeting 21st-century standards of care, Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine got Northwell to include a new outpatient-mental-health facility designed to serve up to 30,000 patient visits a year.
That’s “a really important step forward,” Levine cheered of the commitment.
The proposed 436-foot tower on Lexington Avenue between 76th and 77th streets will include 475 single-bed rooms, 30 new operating rooms and an expanded emergency department.
The hospital campus saw its last upgrade more than half a century ago — so its operating rooms are undersized and poorly configured for tomorrow’s technology and modern medical practices.
Of course, some locals are complaining about the project’s scale, nine-year timeline and “impact” on the neighborhood — one that Lenox Hill has been a part of for 160 years.
In deference to community concerns, Northwell scotched its initial plans for a 500-foot-tall medical center with an adjacent residential building, and will also reduce congestion via new off-street ambulance bays on E. 77th Street and finance improved pedestrian access to the 77th Street subway station.
And any pains for the neighborhood must be balanced against the benefits of a $2 billion private investment by a proven health-care provider — when the city’s been losing hospitals by the dozens in recent decades.
The neighborhood and the whole city will gain here — and nixing the plan is all too likely to discourage any moves to modernize other local hospitals.
To remain a world-class town, New York City must support world-class health-care institutions. Approving Northwell’s rezoning application will show that the City Council truly cares about the Big Apple’s future.