New York Times
St. Vincent’s Deal Would Provide Emergency Care
By: Jenny Anderson

A new emergency care center would replace the shuttered St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan in Greenwich Village under a deal announced on Thursday involving the hospital, its creditors, a developer and a hospital chain that would run the center.

The agreement revives an earlier plan by the Rudin development family to buy the St. Vincent’s properties on West 11th and 12th Streets and replace some of its buildings with town houses and apartments. The emergency care center would be opposite the residences, in the landmark O’Toole building on Seventh Avenue.

Under the plan, it would provide 24-hour emergency care and ambulatory surgery, but not the comprehensive services of a full-fledged hospital. It is to be run by the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System and will be called the North Shore-LIJ Center for Comprehensive Care.

“This is a full-functioning, full-service emergency department that is unique,” said Michael Dowling, the president and chief executive of the North Shore-LIJ Health System, “and we should be given credit for doing something unique that will serve the needs of the Greenwich Village community.”

The proposed emergency center would employ 400 full-time workers and provide care to 450 to 500 patients a day, or roughly 72,000 patients a year.

St. Vincent’s, which opened in 1849 and was the city’s last Catholic full-service hospital, had been struggling as the progressively wealthier residents of the Village began drifting toward more prestigious hospitals, and it closed last year under the weight of more than $700 million in debt.

Negotiations over the property have ignited a number of controversies about health care, land use and even abortion rights. Some in the community are angry that there will still be no full-service hospital in the Village.

Dr. David Kaufman, a spokesman for the Coalition for a New Village Hospital who worked at St. Vincent’s for more than 30 years, said, “You can’t have an emergency room without a hospital.”

“When you have sick people,” he added, “they need the resources and support systems of a full hospital.”

The City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, who represents the neighborhood, said she wanted a full-service hospital, but did not rule out the new plan.

“I am encouraged,” Ms. Quinn said, “by the commitment of both North Shore-LIJ and the Rudin family to working with local stakeholders to ensure that all the needs of the West Side residents are met.”

The Rudin family will proceed with plans, approved in 2009 by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, to develop the St. Vincent’s complex into 300 units of luxury apartments and town houses. There are eight buildings on the property, four of which will be destroyed to make room for seven residential towers and five town houses; the other four buildings would be renovated. The Rudins will also contribute $10 million to the $110 million that North Shore would spend to turn the O’Toole building into the new emergency care center. The family also bought a small area in front of the hospital, where it plans to spend $5 million to $10 million to make it into a park.

Aspects of the plan must be approved by city and state agencies, as well as the United States Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan. Assuming it obtains the permissions it needs, Mr. Dowling said, the emergency center will open in fall 2013.

North Shore-LIJ has been seeking a greater share of the city market and acquired Lenox Hill Hospital on the Upper East Side last year. An earlier plan under which North Shore-LIJ would have leased space in St. Vincent’s closed building fell through, in part because St. Vincent’s officials insisted that North Shore workers not be permitted to discuss birth control or abortion.

“We do not think this will be an issue” in the new facility, said Terry Lynam, a North-Shore-LIJ spokesman. “The agreement calls for the building to be donated to North Shore-LIJ, so we will be the owners.”

Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, said that the plan for the complex might have Landmarks approval but that a number of complex zoning approvals were still needed. The society has objected to the sizes of the proposed buildings on Seventh Avenue.
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Wall Street Journal
Meet St. Vincent's Replacement
By: Shelly Banjo / shelly.banjo@wsj.com
 
St. Vincent's Catholic Medical Centers of New York, which filed for bankruptcy and closed last April, will end up as part luxury housing complex and part emergency-medicine center under a deal announced Thursday.

The Rudin family, one of New York's richest landlords, has agreed to buy most of the sprawling three-acre site along Seventh Avenue in Greenwich village. It plans 300 apartments and five townhouses there.

And North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System is putting up $100 million to renovate the O'Toole building on Seventh Avenue and turn it into a medical complex, with a 24-hour emergency medical department.

The Rudin family also will pay $10 million to North Shore-LIJ toward the building's renovation and between $5 million and $10 million to pay for a public park at the St. Vincent's triangle.

The deal must be approved by the bankruptcy court next month. But the hospital's board of directors and its creditors have signed off on it, St. Vincent's chief restructuring officer, Mark Toney, said.

St. Vincent's had considered another bid by a partnership composed of a real-estate developer and a health provider. But it ultimately decided on the private sale to the Rudin family in order to move the deal along at a faster pace, Mr. Toney said.

Shortly after the court approves the sale, William Rudin said he plans to begin the city's land-use process to convert four existing hospital buildings and demolish four others, replacing them with seven luxury apartment buildings and five townhouses on the former hospital's east campus.

The Rudin family has been working on the St. Vincent's redevelopment project for nearly five years. In 2009, it received approval from the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission to turn the hospital into a medical facility surrounded by 300 units of luxury apartments and town houses. Under the original deal, the family business would have paid close to $300 million for the campus.

Mr. Rudin said he expects to complete the residential project by late 2014 or early 2015.

Meanwhile, North Shore-LIJ said it plans to file with the New York State Department of Health next month for a certificate of need to operate the medical facility.

The renovated six-story, 160,000-square-foot complex would open in the fall of 2013. Serving between 400 and 500 patients a day, it would fill a gaping hole in the neighborhood's emergency medical facilities, including ambulatory care and imaging facilities, that were lost when the 160-year-old hospital closed last spring.

However, the new medical complex won't fulfill all of the neighborhood's needs, such as responding to level-one trauma for patients who have been in a severe car accident. A full-service hospital with an intensive-care unit, providing the highest level of surgical care and in-patient services, would be a much more costly operation to run than an out-patient facility.