Success Stories
St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan
Category: Government Relations/Real Estate Advisory
Subcategory: Landmark Approvals
Challenge: St. Vincent’s Hospital Manhattan is investing in its future with plans to build a new, state-of-the-art medical facility. By providing emergency, specialty, and preventative care, St. Vincent’s new hospital will be the centerpiece of health services for the millions of people who visit, work, and live in Manhattan’s lower west side.
To generate sufficient resources to build its new home, St. Vincent’s has partnered with the Rudin family, respected real estate developers, to sell some of its existing properties. The partnership involves the Rudins buying eight St. Vincent’s buildings located between 12th and 13th streets on the east side of Seventh Avenue; the Rudins will convert this space to residential use, and St. Vincent’s will dedicate proceeds from the sale to help fund construction of the new hospital.
Before St. Vincent’s can lay bricks in the ground, however, proposed designs for the new hospital and residential component must complete New York City’s Uniform Land Use Review Process (ULURP), which includes a required approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
Strategy: Capalino+Company is advising the St. Vincent’s/Rudin team on government and community relations as it seeks to secure the public approvals necessary to begin construction of the new hospital and residential campus. To engage the project’s numerous stakeholders and to help St. Vincent’s communicate its message of why a new hospital is critical to maintaining its superlative standard of care, Capalino+Company has implemented a process of community consultation that for New York City is unprecedented in scope.
Result: While currently under Landmarks review, St. Vincent’s vision for a new hospital has received the active support of many civic organizations including leading preservation societies, the Central Labor Council, SEIU 1199, dozens of local community groups and thousands of Greenwich Village and Chelsea residents. The project is poised to produce numerous public benefits including the preservation of four of St. Vincent’s historic buildings, the creation of two new schools (an elementary school that will add 560 classroom seats to Greenwich Village, as well as a charter school in the Bronx) and, of course, the construction of New York City’s first new hospital in over 30 years, a hospital designed for maximum sustainability and health-care efficiency.
