The City Council approved the controversial new Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center medical facility on the Upper East Side yesterday.
The hospital will partner with Hunter College on the 1.15 million-square-foot complex, and the partnership will buy the land, on FDR Drive between East 73rd and 74th streets, for $226 million. There will be a 400,000-square-foot building for science research labs and nursing and physical therapy schools, and a 750,000-square-foot, 23-story building for miscellaneous departments.
Area activists and politicians have opposed the complex, calling it a vanity project. Residents claim the area already has enough hospitals.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg awarded Sloan Kettering and CUNY the bid to develop the site — currently a garage – in September 2012. In August the City Planning Commission approved a “bulk variance” for the proposal. Yesterday’s vote was the final step before the project can break ground, according to Crain’s. [Crain’s] — Mark Maurer