As part of the rescue plan for St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical Center, developer Bill Rudin and North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System are planning a $110 million gut renovation of the six-story O’Toole Building, on Seventh Avenue between 12th and 13th streets, that would build a new Comprehensive Care Center and emergency department, operating as part of North Shore other recent takeover, Lenox Hill Hospital.
The Villager has a comprehensive roundup of the plans, which include a 19,000-square-foot emergency department — larger than the St. Vincent’s emergency room that closed a year ago and the first free-standing emergency department in the metropolitan area. North Shore is expected to contribute $100 million to the project, with Rudin pitching in the other $10 million.
St. Vincent’s H.I.V. and AIDS clinics, which were taken over by Mt. Sinai and Beth Israel and had operated in the O’Toole Building, are looking to relocate within the neighborhood after their leases expire in June, as the new center will not provide H.I.V. services.
Pending approvals, construction is slated to begin this fall, with a tentative opening date for the facility set for the summer of 2013. The center will employ around 400 permanent staffers and see between 30,000 and 35,000 visitors per year once in operation, and Rudin is also planning to convert the triangular space across from O’Toole on West 12th Street into a public park.
Meanwhile, Rudin told the newspaper that his plans to create a 250- to 300-unit residential apartment complex on St. Vincent’s main campus is, as of now, in the same form as it was when the Landmarks Preservation Commission approved them in 2009, though the project still needs to go through the city’s uniform land-use review procedure before it can move forward. [The Villager]