TONIGHT :
New York-Presbyterian renewal on White Plains agenda
By ALEX PHILIPPIDIS :: February 5, 2007

Tonight the White Plains Common Council tonight is expected to vote on whether to extend for another year the 2002 approval granted to New York-Presbyterian Hospital for a 384,000-square-foot biomedical complex within its Bloomingdale Road campus.

Council President Ritz Z. Malmud wasn’t saying how she or other council members will vote. But she more than hinted she has more than run out of patience with the hospital:

“We’ve gone way beyond what was envisioned,” Malmud said. “It has nothing to do with the wonderful medical care that they deliver. This has to do with, would I do the same thing for the next land developer?”

Malmud cited city zoning law, which requires applicants to commence “substantial construction” within a year or complete their projects within three.

The hospital and business leaders had touted the project as key to expanding Westchester’s nascent biotech cluster – a factor Malmud termed irrelevant: “I’m a White Plains legislator, and I have to deal with the realities and the legalities of what’s going on here in White Plains.”

Realities include an all-Democratic council whose majority faction is increasingly inclined to challenge Mayor Joseph Delfino on land use proposals; he has supported New York-Presbyterian’s plan. Late last year the majority faction pulled off a 4-3 defeat of Delfino’s request to let the hospital subdivide part of its campus to allow 143 housing units on 60 acres, in exchange for a 6.5-acre park.

First conceived in 1999, the biomedical project flowered into two options (plans A and B) in 2000 before both were voted down by the council that year. New York-Presbyterian sued the council, but stopped pursuing its litigation in 2001 when council members agreed to consider a revised biomed plan that was eventually modified again, then approved.

The project has run into the same buzzsaw of local opposition from neighboring residents as 25 years worth of various commercial and residential proposals to build on undeveloped portions of the hospital campus. Neighbors have long argued New York-Presbyterian should develop its remaining land according to current zoning – up to three single-family houses per acre – and have tried to persuade the hospital to sell or lease land to the city for a new park.

While New York-Presbyterian received extensions of its approvals, it never went ahead with its plan due to an impasse over who would spend the first bucks for the project: The state (which under then-Gov. George E. Pataki in 2003 touted the project as its sixth Center of Excellence) or corporate partners (led by units of IBM Corp. and General Electric Co.)?

Reader Comments

Add Your Comments