Northwell Health quietly filed plans with the City last week that would dramatically expand the dimensions of Lenox Hill Hospital. Somehow, the project, which includes a massive new 436 feet tall tower that requires a zoning change, will increase the Upper East Side facility’s patient capacity by just 25 beds.
According to filings with the New York City Department of Planning, the Lenox Hill Hospital’s new tower would only have 26-floors despite being more than 40-stories tall, more than doubling the size of the hospital located on East 77th Street, between Lexington and Park Avenues.
In addition to the gigantic new tower rising over the Lexington Avenue side of the complex, the rest of the main hospital is expected to undergo major renovations, giving Lenox Hill Hospital a total of 1.4 million square feet of space, according to the filing which was first reported by Patch.
Besides the 25 new inpatient beds, which all get their own rooms, there will be one additional labor and delivery room, a well as an increase the number of operating rooms from 25 to 30. Lenox Hill’s emergency department will also have treatment stations for 14 more patients.
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Northwell’s plans also call for a 46,000 square foot, seven-story building to be built on a lot across the street from Lenox Hill Hospital to house hospital support functions, including educational and administrative space. Plans also include an underground tunnel to connect this new building to the main complex.
Construction is expected start in 2025 and last nine years just on the tower and exterior building work, with an addition two years of interior construction. The extensive work destined to perpetually clog up the already congested area around the hospital with closures and standstill traffic for more than a decade.
The massive expansion plans also come as Northwell Health pushes forward on a new 200,000 square foot, fifteen story building a block away on Third Avenue, between East 76th and 77th Streets. That facility, which has stirred controversy of its own, is expected to serve a centralized point of care for cancer patients.
Plans filed last week are quite similar to those submitted nearly four years ago, however, a controversial residential tower planned to go up along Park Avenue has been scrapped and the height of the hospital tower has been reduced by 80 feet.
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In addition to the new hospital space, construction plans also include wider stairwells at the 77th Street-Lexington Avenue subway station and install two accessible elevators, one from the mezzanine to the surface and the other from the mezzanine to the downtown platform.
“Following significant input from our neighbors, patients, physicians, and staff on our proposal in 2019, we remain committed to reinvesting in a state-of-the-art Lenox Hill Hospital where New Yorkers can get world-class treatment and services today and for years to come,” Northwell Health said in a statement.
“We understand stakeholders will share additional feedback over the coming months. We look forward to working together so that Lenox Hill continues to be an essential healthcare partner for New York City.”
Community Board 8’s Zoning & Development Committee will take up the proposal later this month. You can sign up to speak during the public comment portion by clicking here.
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Kind of smells like there’s something else going on here. Northwell could care less about what it does to neighborhoods; the bigger it builds, the merrier, the more the top bosses earn. Not saying that LH doesn’t need to be modernized, but if I were part of CB8 I’d take a very close look at the details.