Weill Cornell planning campus on Upper East Side

Weill Cornell Medical College filed plans for a 221-unit building on the Upper East Side almost three years after buying the development site from a local church.

The plans filed last week detail a 128,000-square-foot building at 1393 York Avenue, only a few blocks away from the school’s 1300 York Avenue campus, PincusCo first reported.

The construction job is anticipated to cost around $118 million, according to PincusCo. When completed, the 202-foot-tall building standing 17 stories tall will have housing and amenities for students.

A lounge, a garden and offices will fill the ground floor of the development. Most of the floors above the ground will have 16 or 17 units for student housing and one of the floors will include offices and lounge space. In the cellar, meanwhile, there will be office space and an exercise room.

Perkins & Will Architects is listed as the architect of the building.

Weill Cornell bought the development site from Church of the Epiphany for $68 million — just over $600 per buildable square foot — in February 2019. At the time of the sale, it was expected the college would use the 112,000 square feet of buildable space to add housing for its medical students.

Shortly after selling its Norman Gothic-style building, the church bought a building a block away at 351 East 74th Street, giving Jan Hus Presbyterian Church $22.5 million for a new home.

The Upper East Side is a growing hub of medical centers. Gary Barnett’s Extell Development is expected to break ground later this year on a 30-story, 400,000-square-foot building between East 79th Street and East 80th Street on First Avenue. Half of the project is already pre-leased to the Hospital for Special Surgery and Extell is looking to lease the upper floors to other medical tenants.

The City Planning Commission earlier this year approved rezoning that opens the door for the New York Blood Center’s controversial plans to build a 334-foot life sciences hub on East 67th Street. The building, which is slated to replace the center’s three-story headquarters, has set off concerns from authorities and community members due to its size.

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[PincusCo] — Holden Walter-Warner