New York Methodist underwhelmed by group’s proposal: report

Activist group Preserve Park Slope has offered an alternate expansion plan for the neighborhood’s New York Methodist Hospital, but so far officials at the medical facility are having none of it.

The new plan, which group members say addresses their concerns about the traffic, smog and out-of-place architecture Methodist’s current proposal will bring, drops the building’s roof by 45 feet by shifting a portion of the building’s bulk to an attached parking garage. The move brings the compound closer to being in line with the four-story rooftops of area townhouses, according to David Hirsch, an architect who drafted the design.

“The benefits of using the adjacent garage are so numerous and so obvious that we are hopeful that the [city] will require [New York Methodist Hospital] to reexamine this potential,” Hirsch told the Brooklyn Paper.

But Methodist isn’t a fan of the idea, according to the paper. Executives at the hospital claim the plan would require a substantial retrofitting of The Building Over The Fifth Street garage — a process that would require closing the parking facility for 17 months, a hospital representative wrote in a letter to the city. Methodist also took issue with the sizing limitations the move would mean for the building’s floors, which representatives said would be too small to accommodate the various clinical institutes.

Activists want the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals to demand more information on their proposal, and Methodist architects are currently studying the plan and will respond publicly at the board’s next meeting on April 8. [Brooklyn Paper] — Julie Strickland