New York City-based Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center has reintroduced plans for a new hospital tower on the city's Upper East Side, Patch reported. The project is more than 20 years in the making and was originally disrupted by the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
The "MSK Pavilion" was first scheduled for a zoning hearing on Sept. 12, 2001, which never occurred due to the prior day's terrorist attacks. The city asked the hospital to scale back its plans, thus reducing pressure on the city's planning department as it rebuilt lower Manhattan.
"We voluntarily withdrew that application," Shelly Friedman, Memorial Sloan Kettering's land use attorney, said at a March 28 community board meeting. "It's totally addressed in the City Planning Commission report, that they expected us to come back at a time when the inpatient hospital was more developed and evolved."
"That building is the Pavilion and that time is now," Mr. Friedman said.
Some board members expressed concern about the project's size, according to Patch. If approved, the hospital would span nearly 1 million square feet and tower 31 stories. A skybridge would connect the new addition to Memorial Sloan Kettering's main hospital.
Additionally, some were concerned about disruptions to traffic, infrastructure and the neighborhood's already-squeezed housing market. Memorial Sloan Kettering owns a 336-unit residential building on the site, which would likely be demolished if the Pavilion came to fruition.
Five more meetings have been scheduled to discuss the issue, Patch reported.