The local paper for the Upper East Side
WEEK OF MARCH A CUSTOM-MADE ARMORY SHOW ◄ P.12
14-20 2019
Also inside: We like to dream a lot. But then, we like to implement. Dreaming alone doesn’t help you.” Michael Dowling CEO of Northwell Health
HOW YOUR BUS MEASURES UP ▲ P.5 Jan Hus Presbyterian Church is buying the longtime Home of Soccer Building on First Avenue and vacating its home on East 74th Street. Photo: Jim Nedelka / Jan Hus
JAN HUS BUYS SOCCER SHOP EXCLUSIVE A fabled Yorkville church, forced to sell its ancestral home to remain solvent, uses the proceeds to secure new quarters for its congregation and social-justice mission BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
After 131 years of worship on East 74th Street, Jan Hus Presbyterian Church is purchasing a building 16 blocks to the north and will move into the new space by the spring of 2020, Our Town has learned. The neighborhood stalwart that once anchored “Little Bohemia” — and provided a spiritual base for legions of Czech parishioners — is buying the Home of Soccer Building on First Avenue just above East 90th Street. It plans to convert the four-story commercial property into a multi-use,
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OTTY AWARDS: BEST OF THE UES▲ P.7 The corner of Park Avenue and 77th Street, portrayed in this architectural rendering, shows Lenox Hill Hospital’s proposed new Mother-Baby Hospital. Just to the right is a planned hyper-luxurious residential tower on pricey land that would be sold to help underwrite Lenox Hill’s new campus. Rendering: Courtesy of Lenox Hill Hospital / Northwell Health
BUILDING THE HOSPITAL OF TOMORROW COMMUNITY Lenox Hill plans to demolish 80 percent of its East Side campus, invest $2.5 billion on futuristic facilities — and sell some of the most valuable real estate in Manhattan to fund its new superblock BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
The last time Lenox Hill Hospital built a major new facility on its legacy campus it was 1972 and John Lindsay was mayor. Now, the storied, 162-year-old medi-
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cal institution on the Upper East Side is about to make up for lost time. It is launching a sweeping, decadelong redevelopment project that will radically transform how it practices medicine and delivers patient care. Plans call for razing or stripping to the shell the entire hospital campus in phases as taller, modern structures rise up on site to replace them. That means a full city block, bounded by Park and Lexington Avenues and 76th and 77th Streets, will be rebuilt, reimagined and reinvented. When the dust settles — and there will be plenty of it — the 780,000-square-foot, multi-building hodgepodge that is today’s hospital will give way to a new seamless, pur-
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pose-built institution occupying 1.32 million square feet. That 69 percent increase in the facility’s envelope will enable Lenox Hill Hospital, which is under the umbrella of Northwell Health, to develop modern, full-size patient rooms, operating rooms, emergency room, imaging suites and other clinical care units that will dwarf the current aging and undersized offerings, its executives say. “Other major facilities in Manhattan have advanced their physical plants dramatically and expanded over the past couple of years,” said Michael Dowling, the president and
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‘KISS ME KATE’ IN THE AGE OF #METOO ▲ P.14 Jewish women and girls light up the world by lighting the Shabbat candles every Friday evening 18 minutes before sunset. Friday, March 15 – 6:44 pm. For more information visit www.chabaduppereastrside.com.
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