Officials from St. Vincent’s Hospital are seeking a hardship exemption from the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission that would allow them to build a new hospital in Greenwich Village.

The hospital’s joint proposal with the Rudin Management Company to demolish nine buildings and build a hospital and luxury apartments within the historic district suffered a blow yesterday when the commission strongly criticized the billion-dollar plan.

The city’s landmarks law contains a provision that allows nonprofit organizations to apply for a hardship exemption in situations where the landmarks commission is not prepared to sign off on demolition. To achieve a hardship exemption, St. Vincent’s would have to prove to the 11-member commission that it cannot fulfill its charitable mission while preserving the O’Toole Building, a low-lying Modernist building on Seventh Avenue erected in 1961 and designed by the architect Albert Ledner.

“The reality is that the O’Toole site is the only location where we can build a fully efficient, state-of-the-art green hospital to serve the people of New York,” the chief executive officer of St. Vincent’s, Henry Amoroso, said. “We are committed to continuing our more than 150-year mission of providing quality health care to an enormous number of New Yorkers, and we will return as soon as possible to the landmarks commission.”

St. Vincent’s and Rudin need approval from the city to raze the O’Toole Building and replace it with a new 329-foot-tall hospital. St. Vincent’s would sell nine existing buildings to Rudin for $310 million, and the proceeds from the sale would go toward 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.

The project has come under fire from local residents and preservationists who say the plans are out of scale with the neighborhood and fear the precedent the plan would set for future large proposals in historic districts.

In their comments yesterday, the commissioners were unanimous in their opposition to the demolition of the O’Toole Building. The commission took no official action at the hearing, but the 10 members present criticized the proposal as “inappropriate,” “gigantic,” “perplexing,” and an “assault” on the surrounding neighborhood.

“We must proceed extremely cautiously. Any demolition in a historic district is an enormous step that needs to be analyzed further,” the commission’s chairman, Robert Tierney, said. He said it was time for a “deep breath and a rethinking” of the project, and he encouraged St. Vincent’s officials to rethink their plan and reapply.

“That was one of the strongest statements I have seen the landmarks commission make. Clearly this proposal raised the hackles of some commissioners,” the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Andrew Berman, said.

Filing for a hardship exemption may allow the hospital to do an end run around the commission’s opposition to the demolition. Since 1965, the commission has considered 17 applicants for financial hardship status and granted 12.

A majority of the commissioners said they could support the demolition of some of the buildings that make up St. Vincent’s Hospital.

The president of Rudin Management Company, William Rudin, said in a statement: “We will evaluate the feedback we’ve gotten and hopefully identify a viable alternative that would address the concerns of the Commission and the community.”