Proton cancer treatment center eschews UES for East Harlem

For the last two years a group of New York hospitals have been working to bring the increasingly popular proton therapy method to the city’s cancer patients, who currently have to travel to Philadelphia or Boston for the treatment.

After unsuccessfully looking to the West 57th Street development now controlled by TF Cornerstone and Related Companies’ proposed tower on East 92nd Street, the hospitals — led by Florida-based 21st Century Oncology and including Memorial Sloan Kettering, NYU, Mount. Sinai, Montefiore Medical Center, and Continuum Health Partners — are now focusing on 2485 Second Avenue in Harlem, the New York Post reported.

The site, owned by car dealer Alan Potamkin and running the full block between East 127th and East 128th streets all the way to Third Avenue, is ideal for the New York Proton Center partnership because it needs a rectangle of about 40,000 square feet so that the protons can run in a straight line to better treat patients, according to the group’s broker, Mark Weiss of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank.

The hospitals have a letter of intent in place for a ground-lease on the site to build a VOA-designed 120,000-square-foot structure that would open in 2015 or 2016 and treat 1,300 to 1,400 people per year. That’s still well short of the demand for proton therapy among New York-area cancer patients. [Post, 1st item]