Land Use committee approves Lenox Hill Hospital rezoning with limits on height and stronger hospital‑use requirements

The New York City Council Committee on Land Use approved modifications to the Lenox Hill Hospital redevelopment plan, a package of zoning map, text and special‑permit actions that sponsors said will facilitate rebuilding an aging campus while preserving hospital capacity.

Council members considered LU 339, LU 340 and LU 341 and voted to approve the actions with modifications. The committee’s recommendations will be forwarded to the full Land Use Committee and then the Council.

Subcommittee chair Kevin Riley introduced the item and described three land‑use actions proposed by the applicant: (1) rezoning most of the full block bounded by East 70th and East 71st Streets (between Lexington and Park Avenues) to higher commercial districts, (2) a zoning text amendment to create a special permit controlling the hospital’s bulk and to map MIH where required, and (3) the special permit itself.

Committee sponsors said the redevelopment would replace an aging 10‑building campus and allow construction of a single, modern hospital building with updated clinical standards. The applicant’s design presented during the hearing showed a hospital with 475 single‑bed patient rooms and expanded emergency and operating facilities.

The committee approved three key modifications to the City Planning Commission recommendations:

- Remove one development alternative (referred to during the hearing as Option 2) from the special‑permit options and reduce the maximum height along Lexington Avenue for the remaining option from the prior figure (436 feet as cited earlier in the review record) to 370 feet; sponsors said the change reduces tower scale along Lexington while keeping capacity.

- Require that at least 95% of the proposed development site be used for hospital purposes to qualify for the special permit; the CPC record previously allowed a lower hospital‑use percentage (75%).

- Require a through‑block ambulance circulation route: ambulances would enter from East 71st Street, access interior ambulance bays, and exit on East 70th Street, rather than backing out on East 71st Street. The applicant also agreed to relocate the hospital’s mother‑baby entrance off Park Avenue onto East 70th Street.

Council Member Keith Powers, who spoke at both subcommittee and full committee, framed the revisions as a response to community concerns about scale and construction. Powers said the final package reduces the hospital height and shortens the construction timeline from earlier proposals, while preserving inpatient capacity. He described commitments that sponsors and the hospital made for transit and community benefits, including a $20 million new southbound subway entrance to make the platform ADA accessible, a $5 million commitment for northbound accessibility repairs and approximately $2.5 million in additional community benefits (sanitation, beautification, education and outreach), as presented in the hearing.

Sponsors and members emphasized that the revisions are intended to retain the hospital’s health‑care capacity while addressing neighborhood scale and circulation issues.

The committee approved LU 339, LU 340 and LU 341 with the described modifications and referred the items for further Council consideration.