White Plains council KOs extension for biomed project
By ALEX PHILIPPIDIS :: February 6, 2007

A divided White Plains Common Council late last night rejected a six-month extension for the 384,000-square-foot biomedical center long discussed by The New York-Presbyterian Hospital for its Bloomingdale Road campus, effectively killing the project.

Common Council President Rita Z. Malmud led the 4-3 vote against extending approvals originally approved for the project in 2002, then extended in 2003 and 2004. Joining Malmud were council members Benjamin Boykin II, Dennis Power and Thomas Roach. Mayor Joseph M. Delfino voted for the extension, along with council allies Arnold Bernstein and Glen Hockley.

“I see no reason to continue the farce,” Malmud said.

Malmud and allies faulted New York-Presbyterian for failing to explain the need for the extension at recent council meetings and work sessions.

“The city has bent over backwards to support this applicant. At the end of the day, they lost interest themselves.”

Countered Hockley: “Our residents need and deserve the best that New York-Presbyterian Hospital has to offer. We should not stand in the way of New York-Presbyterian Hospital to serve the White Plains community.”

Delfino, a supporter of the biomed plan, defended New York-Presbyterian as having complied with extensive conditions imposed on it in return for the 2002 approval: “They did a lot and it was very costly to them.”

Council members spoke, then voted after several neighboring residents urged them to vote against the extension. Neighbors have sparred with the hospital and its predecessor New York Hospital since 1981 over its various plans to develop unused portions of its campus.

In December the council rejected by the identical 4-3 margin a Delfino-introduced plan to subdivide 65 hospital-owned acres near Bryant Avenue to allow construction of 143 housing units, with the hospital offering the city a 6.5 acre park in return. That proposal followed a year of talks between the mayor and New York-Presbyterian CEO Herbert Pardes.

Geoff Thompson, a New York-Presbyterian spokesman, said the hospital had no immediate comment.

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