A proposal by St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Centers to demolish a landmark building in the heart of Greenwich Village has set the stage for a showdown among some of the most powerful players in New York’s real estate community.
The hospital has already publicly unveiled plans that would make way for the demolition of eight buildings between 11th and 13th streets, including the O’Toole Building, a landmark contemporary white building that occupies more than half the block on Seventh Avenue South between 12th and 13th streets. The institution and its development partner, Rudin Management, planned to file a formal request to move forward with the demolition late last month – a move that will undoubtedly intensify the debate.
The initial proposal, which has been the subject of several daily newspaper stories, could trigger the biggest landmark battle of the year. The debate centers largely on the proposed replacement buildings, which include a new 321-foot-high hospital building that would be the tallest tower in the Greenwich Village Historic District, and a 21-story luxury condo tower.
The luxury condominium units, especially, are being planned for an area that has not had a blank spot for this type of development in a long while.
Rob Gross, a broker with Douglas Elliman, said he expects any replacement condos to compare with nearby One Jackson Square and Superior Ink, luxury buildings that command an average of $2,000 a square foot.
“By virtue of its location, it might be a little less chic,” Gross said, noting One Jackson Square’s position at the “gateway” to the West Village and Superior Ink’s river views.
But the area’s low density still makes it highly desirable, he said. “Who doesn’t want to live in the West Village?”
Making the showdown even more compelling is that it brings together St. Vincent’s, one of the largest hospital networks in the city; Rudin Management, which is run by one of the most prominent real estate families in the city; the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation; and the Bloomberg administration.
It also centers on what has become a love-it-or-hate-it building, a low-slung scalloped box designed by famed architect Albert Ledner, who also designed the Maritime Hotel. And it involves a hospital that only recently emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy and is banking on the facility it hopes to erect in place of the O’Toole Building for its survival.
Hospital officials said the dated O’Toole Building is largely unusable and that a new, more modern building will enhance services for the very community that is resisting its construction.
The plan hinges on a partnership with Rudin, which is to buy the seven buildings that make up the hospital’s campus just to the south, on Seventh Avenue between 11th and 12th streets. In their place, Rudin plans to construct 450 units of luxury housing along with 15,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space and an underground parking garage.
According to John Gilbert, Rudin’s chief operating officer, the company would buy the site for about $325 million and build a 21-story, 265-foot luxury condo tower fronting Seventh Avenue, as well as 19 mid-block townhouses split between 11th and 12th streets.
Gilbert acknowledged that this would be a rare opportunity to build residential units in a historic landmark district. He also noted the challenge of ensuring that whatever is built fits into the context of the surrounding area.
“Really, the philosophy of the design was to focus in on, ‘What would this block have looked like if St. Vincent’s wasn’t there?’ ” he said.
Local preservationists agree that St. Vincent’s needs more modern facilities, but are upset about the luxury residential tower and the lack of affordable housing being earmarked.
As the New York Times recently pointed out, however, cash-poor hospitals in New York are increasingly turning to the land they sit on as a primary asset to help bail them out of financial troubles.
Bernadette Kingham-Bez, the hospital’s senior vice president for strategic planning and communications, said St. Vincent’s considered a series of bridges across Seventh Avenue to connect existing facilities, but dismissed the idea as impractical and aesthetically displeasing.
Ultimately, Kingham-Bez said, renovating isn’t feasible because the hospital needs the revenue from its sale to Rudin. Without that revenue, she said, “it doesn’t end up where we need to be.”
Meanwhile, the St. Vincent’s proposal will put the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission in a sticky situation. The body will have to balance St. Vincent’s argument, which is likely to center on its ability to thrive as the largest hospital in Lower Manhattan, with the LPC’s primary mission of preserving historically significant structures.
While rare, demolition requests in historic districts are not unheard of. In fact, St. Vincent’s has turned over these stones before. In 1979, the LPC approved the demolition of the hospital’s Lowenstein and Seton buildings at West 11th Street and Seventh Avenue, as well as the design of the new, 16-story Coleman building at the site, said Lisi de Bourbon, a spokeswoman for the commission.
A New York Times headline at the time read, “St. Vincent’s Hospital Plan Stirs Anger.” Now, less than 30 years later, the hospital is asking for permission to knock down the Coleman building.
De Bourbon said she could not comment on the proposal because St. Vincent’s had not yet filed an application.
Ian Bader, the chief architect with the firm Pei Cobb Freed and Partners, which has been hired by St. Vincent’s to design the new hospital, called the hospital’s location a “fairly idiosyncratic site” because of its position right at an intersection of the city’s numbered street grid and the diagonal streets of Lower Manhattan. The challenge, he said, was to design a building in tune with both streetscapes.
The prospect of the new buildings vexes preservationists. Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, said his organization’s recommendations about the hospital’s plan have not asked for any reduction to the hospital space. “In fact,” he said, “we would gladly have more hospital.”
But Berman said the wholesale demolition of eight buildings in a historic district, followed by the construction of the tallest building in the same district, would amount to a galling disregard for precedent.
“We’d like them to hold onto maybe one more property, so instead of having one huge building, they could have two reasonably sized buildings that would fit in with the neighborhood a little better,” he said.
At press time, a community task force unveiled an alternative plan that proposes significantly reducing the height of the new hospital and eliminating Rudin’s new residential tower. And, rather than demolish the hospital’s current buildings, the group wants the hospital to adapt four of its buildings for residential use. It’s still unclear what impact that plan will have on St. Vincent’s actual proposals.