New York City’s Planning Commission, which votes on whether to approve applications for special construction projects, is supporting Lenox Hill Hospital’s expansion plans, which Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine is backing.
Even though Community Board 8 voted against it, support for Northwell Health’s proposed expansion of Lenox Hill Hospital (LHH) appears to be facing only one final hurdle: a City Council hearing and vote.
Yet Upper East Side residents still plan to continue waging a battle to alter the construction plans. Northwell Health, a nonprofit organization with an operating budget of $18.6B, owns LHH. The nonprofit wants to expand and modernize LHH’s 10-building campus, which is situated between Park and Lexington Avenues, and spans from East 76th to East 77th Street. Plans are to revitalize LHH with a new 436-foot hospital tower and new state-of-the-art operating rooms. The hospital, representatives say, also needs to expand the Emergency Department and convert multi-patient rooms into single-patient accommodations.
Construction renovations were originally expected to take 11 years, but new estimates suggest it will take six years, with interior work on the buildings possibly needing an additional three years. Locals say the nearly decade of construction noise and unsafe conditions will affect their quality of life. They claim it will ruin the neighborhood.
Stephanie Reckler of the Save Lenox Hill committee said she and her neighbors are eagerly waiting to review the details of the Planning Commission’s report so they can understand why LHH’s renovation plan was accepted. However, Reckler admits her committee members were “stunned that [the commission] didn’t listen to or take advantage of the expert testimony that our consultants submitted or listen to the testimonies that our supporters gave at their hearing.”
Years of construction in the neighborhood will destroy local businesses, Reckler said, and discourage young families from moving to the neighborhood: “Northwell has owned Lenox Hill Hospital for 15 years, and they’ve done almost nothing to renovate it. We’ve never said that the hospital doesn’t need to be renovated. What we feel is that it should be the best community hospital in the city. Young families should want to move here for this excellent community hospital, but the site does not serve what Northwell wants to do, and [the planned renovation] is truly a vanity project.
“Northwell should abide by the Hippocratic oath of ‘do no harm.’ We would like to have the best community hospital in the city where young families could move here, they could have their babies here, and they could use an excellent ER. But this is not what they are attempting to do, and we certainly do not need more hospital beds. The Upper East Side has five hospitals providing a combined total of 10.58 acute care hospital beds for every thousand residents. That is nearly four times the city-wide rate of 2.7 hospital beds for a thousand people. That is an alarming statistic.”
A Harlem staple
LHH has long been a preferred medical care option for residents of Harlem. Although the Harlem Hospital Center is conveniently located at 135th Street and Lenox Avenue, many people interviewed by the Amsterdam News mentioned that they turn to LHH for emergencies, specialized treatments, and a different healthcare experience.
“Harlem is a very important area for Lenox Hill Hospital and for Northwell overall,” said Dr. Daniel Baker, president of Lenox Hill Hospital. “About probably 8% of our admissions come from Harlem. We’re right on the 6 train, which leads directly to East Harlem, so we have a long-standing history of interacting with Harlem residents and really trying to focus on those individuals.”
Baker noted that LHH has been working with Mother AME Church representatives and a variety of other area organizations to help LHH address the diverse needs of Harlem residents.
Harlem resident Troy Watt’s son was born at LHH. “Actually, my girlfriend, she preferred to go to Lenox Hill, and I’m kind of glad she did, because they gave her excellent care when we were there.” There were complications with the pregnancy before Watt’s son was born, but LHH helped induce labor and then provided two years of postnatal care.
Watt and Harlem organizations voiced support for LHH-Northwell’s expansion plans: Rev. Michael A. Walrond Jr. of First Corinthian Baptist Church and Dr. Adam Aponte, executive director of the East Harlem Council for Human Services, each wrote letters of support for the hospital’s expansion plans. “It’s really the full-fledge of clinical services that we offer that are offered to Harlem residents and the community.”
Beyond clinical services, LHH-Northwell has become a supporter of Harlem service organizations. The 14-year-old urban farming nonprofit Harlem Grown has been strategically and financially supported by LHH-Northwell. “They’ve been an astonishing ally in this fight against inequity and injustice,” said Tony Hillery, Harlem Grown’s founder and CEO. “And when I say that, I just don’t say it because of funding or anything like that: This work goes way beyond that. As it turns out, for so many of our families in Harlem, they’re a hospital of choice. And not only do they provide us with structural support, they create pathways for our children, through internships, paid internships, and paid fellowships at universities. I have put first-generation kids in four-year universities through this program.”
Go to Lexington Avenue and look up
LHH-Northwell’s community orientation played a part in its appeal when it applied for its renovations, say Upper East Side residents. “I couldn’t tell you what the exact justifications are, but what they’re saying is that, because it’s a community facility, because it’s a hospital, they can essentially be much more generous with the rules for them –– unduly so in my opinion,” Nuha Ansari, executive director of FRIENDS of the Upper East Side Historic Districts, told the AmNews. “But the thing is that having a 436-foot tower on Lexington Avenue is clearly like if you go to Lexington Avenue and you look up there, it’s clearly so much higher and so much bulkier than anything that exists. It’s a retail-oriented space — you know how narrow Lexington is. It’s not the same as having it on York Avenue, where the [Planning Commission] recently approved the Memorial Sloan Kettering Pavilion.
“We were trying to say that we’re not at all against Lenox Hill modernizing its facilities,” Ansari continued. “We know that they’ve had to grow in this sort of piecemeal manner, and they’re really sort of locked in at this site. But they never produced any credible alternative; they have not even considered any alternative approaches. Even from a sort of equity standpoint, the fact that all these hospitals are here and not just in Manhattan, but they seem to be concentrated on the Upper East Side. What about all the other areas of the city where there’s great need? I think that is partly why the local community is … really bewildered by what’s just happened.”