St. Vincent's Unveils Smaller-Scale Overhaul

St. Vincent's Hospital is attempting to win approval from the local community board for a new hospital and luxury apartments in the heart of Greenwich Village by unveiling a scaled-back proposal.

The plan released last night would reduce heights and widths of key structures and salvage four buildings that would have been marked for demolition.

Earlier this month, the Landmarks Preservation Commission sent the developers and St. Vincent's back to the drawing board by unanimously opposing the demolition of the O'Toole Building, a Modernist structure on Seventh Avenue.

Hospital administrators are attempting to win support for a plan to replace the O'Toole Building with a more modern hospital facility. St. Vincent's wants to sell nine existing buildings to the Rudin Management Co. for $310 million and use the proceeds from the sale for the new facility. Rudin would then build 650,000 square feet of luxury housing along with street-level retail space, underground parking, and medical office space.

St. Vincent's officials are now saying they would reduce the height of the new hospital by 9%, keeping it at less than 300 feet, and cut its width by 53 feet. The Rudins say they would lower the height of the main residential building planned to rise on Seventh Avenue between 11th and 12th streets to 233 feet from 265 feet, reduce the building's width by 30 feet, and spare four buildings that are currently part of the hospital's campus.

A Landmarks Preservation Commission hearing is scheduled for June 3, at which St. Vincent officials and Rudin executives will present the new plan.

In a statement, the president and chief executive officer of St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers, Henry Amoroso, said the hospital would continue to seek a hardship exemption from the commission that would allow it to tear down the O'Toole Building. To do that, they would have to prove to the 11-member commission that the hospital cannot fulfill its charitable mission while preserving the O'Toole Building.

"The test now is whether they can prove whether an actual hardship exists which has only been proven a dozen times in the history of the landmarks law," the director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Andrew Berman, said. "With regards to the Rudin buildings, they have clearly reduced the size of the proposed buildings. The question will be whether they have reduced them enough."