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West 12 Street, part of the requested rezoning around the now-closed St. Vincent’s Hospital. (Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times)
NEW YORK—The city Planning Commission approved Rudin Management’s rezoning plan of the now-closed St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village.
The rezoning, which allows Rudin to convert hospital buildings into condominiums and to demolish others, has met with opposition from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP), which has also been battling New York University expansion in the village.
GVSHP’s Executive Director Andrew Berman states in a release that the original zoning privileges were meant for a hospital, not for-profit luxury housing.
“It’s deeply disappointing that the city Planning Commission rubber-stamped this plan and granted a well-connected developer privileges which were originally intended for a hospital,” said GVSHP Berman in the release. “This opens a pandora’s box of profoundly negative potential consequences, not just for this neighborhood, but the city as a whole.
The next part of the Uniform Land Use Review, a seven-month process that is invoked when requests include zoning changes, is for the City Council to vote on within 90 days—majority rule would approve the proposal.
