Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Hunter College have yet to close on a planned $226 million purchase of an Upper East Side site for a medical complex.
Until the deal with the city is finalized, however, the organizations cannot start constructing the facility, according to the New York Post.
Hunter and Sloan Kettering have proposed to build a 1.2 million-square-foot, 450-foot-tall project on the site, which is located on FDR Drive between East 73rd and East 74th streets, the newspaper reported. Local community members have opposed the proposal and have sued to stop the plan from happening. The city council approved the project in 2013.
In September 2012, Sloan Kettering President Craig Thompson and then-mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that a new outpatient cancer-care facility would be housed in a 750,000-square-foot tower at the site. That medical facility would be attached to a 336,000-square-foot Hunter College Science and Health Professions building, according to the newspaper.
A former sanitation facility at the site has been demolished.
A Sloan Kettering spokesperson said that the sale was delayed due to “previous legal action,” according to the newspaper. Another Sloan Kettering spokeswoman told the Post that the project first had to go through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure as well as an environmental review. [NYP, 1st] — Claire Moses