NEW YORK—A deal between the city, a cancer center, and a college is “one of the largest real estate transactions the city has ever been involved in,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday.
The multifaceted deal includes the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center purchase of land at 525 E. 73rd Street (near FDR Drive) from the city for $215 million. The institution will construct an outpatient cancer care facility there, while Hunter College, part of the City University of New York (CUNY), will construct a smaller building on the same land. CUNY plans to give the city a block of land on East 25th Street, currently the site of Bellevue School of Nursing, as its part of the deal.
Hunter College would consolidate parts of its currently separate health and science campuses—the East 25th Street campus and some buildings at the main East 68th Street campus—into its proposed East 73rd Street building.
Students at the college lauded the deal, though they will likely not get to use the proposed new building unless they attend a master’s program there.
Students currently have to shuttle back and forth between the main campus on East 68th Street, and the East 25th Street campus.
“It’s not pleasant,” said Kiana Piedrahita, a senior, describing the walk from the subway station on Park Avenue four blocks east. “It’s 95 degrees and it’s very humid and you kind of want to drop your textbooks and go to Dunkin' Donuts to get an iced coffee.”
Students also said the East 25th Street campus, taken over by Hunter College in 1967, has outdated equipment, and that future students would benefit from a newer facility.
Next Steps
Potential roadblocks do exist for the plan, such as the ULURP (Uniform Land Use Review Procedure), which typically takes six months or more and is invoked when planned construction hinges on changing the city map, modifying current zoning, or other related issues. Community boards and the borough president also get an advisory vote, and the City Planning Commission and City Council must support projects with a vote before projects can move forward.
Bloomberg said the deal “has not been a secret,” and community players have been consulted, including council members Daniel Garodnick and Jessica Lappin.
The two proposed buildings, in Lappin’s district, could be up to 750,000 square feet (Memorial Sloan-Kettering), and up to 336,000 square feet (Hunter College).
Lappin and Community Board 8 didn’t respond to requests for comment by press deadline.
Nursing School Set for Demolition
In the other part of the deal, if it goes through, Hunter College would vacate its School of Nursing at CUNY’s Brookdale campus (25th Street and First Avenue), and tear it down. Then the city tentatively plans on building a parking garage there for the Department of Sanitation, which used to have a garage at the East 73rd Street site. The city would also look at developing the rest of the land, which is a full block and estimated to be worth $180 million, for residential use or public space. As another option, the city could sell development rights to recoup the $100 million it is contributing to the East 73rd Street development.
When that eventually happens, “we’re going to have to work with the community,” said Seth Pinksky, president of the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC), which helped broker the deal.
Councilman Garodnick and Community Board 6 Chair Mark Thompson didn’t respond to requests for comment by press deadline. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, who has an advisory vote during the land use process, declined to comment.
The proposed two buildings would bring more than 3,200 construction jobs and nearly 830 permanent jobs, according to analysis from the NYCEDC.
Nearly 100 companies in the health care and biomedical innovation industries are based in the New York City metro area, according to a release from the mayor’s office, and nearly 400 venture capital firms are currently investing more than $560 million in these sectors.
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