Rudin Family To Redevelop St. Vincent's Hospital Campus

Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers has reached an agreement with the Rudin family that paves the way for a dramatic overhaul of the struggling hospital's campus in Greenwich Village and on the West Side.

The Rudin family, whose real estate holdings are estimated at more than 10 million square feet in New York, was selected as the development partner to help revive the hospital, which is exiting bankruptcy, and build state-of-the-art, green hospital center, medical arts building, and a market-rate residential component on its campus.

"We don't need to do this to avoid bankruptcy, but to help our future," a spokesman for the hospital, Michael Fagan, said.

St. Vincent's, which has been part of the neighborhood for more than 150 years, is the sole trauma center serving the West Side of Manhattan between 59th Street and the Battery. The hospital plans to demolish the O'Toole Building between 12th and 13th streets on Seventh Avenue South. The new hospital would be about 600,000 square feet and have 450 beds.

Due to the accelerated residential development in the Far West Village, West Chelsea, and Hudson Yards, as well as the Berger Commission's recommendations for hospital closures throughout the city, St. Vincent's could see an increase in its in-patient admissions, hospital board members said. The new facility would help meet the growing health care needs of downtown and West Side residents.

The Rudin family is "recognized as a responsible developer and outstanding corporate citizen," the chairman of the board of St. Vincent's, Alfred Smith IV, said in a statement. The large-scale construction project would need to be approved by both the Landmarks Preservation and the City Planning commissions.

The Smith and Rudin families plan "to work together on the very complex process of getting approvals from the city, city planning, landmarks, and the community to create a state of the art, environmentally green, 21st-century hospital," he said.

The Smith family's relationship with St. Vincent's goes back close to 75 years, when the archbishop of New York, the late Francis Cardinal Spellman, established a dinner in honor of Alfred E. Smith I, a former New York governor, to raise money for St. Vincent's Catholic Hospital.

The hospital and the Rudin family are also working with the city and the community to develop a plan that could include a residential component on the hospital's campus. Members of this group include representatives of Community Board 2, elected officials, local block associations, community leaders, patient advocates, and physician representatives from the surrounding community.

Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers include the Manhattan hospital, the academic medical center in Greenwich Village, as well as nursing facilities and behavioral health hospitals in Brooklyn, Westchester County, and Staten Island. The new hospital would use green technology to conserve water and energy, and reduce its carbon emissions. Patient records, diagnostic test results, and radiological images would be kept electronically.