Last week, YIMBY reported on the first permits for a new building coming to 70 Atlantic Avenue, in Cobble Hill, at a site formerly known as 339 Hicks Street. It currently houses a building for Long Island College Hospital, but that will soon be demolished to make way for an NYU Langone Ambulatory Care Clinic, which we can now reveal.
Perkins Eastman is designing the facility, which will span a gross 160,000 square feet over five floors. The building will stand 89 feet tall, shorter than the 12-story structure that currently occupies the site.
Of course, shorter does not mean less urban-friendly, and in this case, the new building will be a vast improvement for the neighborhood. LICH was not exactly aesthetically-friendly, and large plazas around its buildings interrupt the urban street-walls of Cobble Hill that help make it so attractive. Perhaps this is why the NIMBYs opposing redevelopment come across as particularly insane.
339 Hicks Street, soon to be known as 70 Atlantic Avenue, image via Google Maps
Perkins Eastman’s plan will rectify anti-urban formatting, at least on this site, and the new building will be flush with its pre-war neighbors. A multi-colored glassy facade will yield to a bright lobby with large floor-to-ceiling windows, which will look especially engaging when viewed from Atlantic Avenue.
Fortis Property Group bought LICH for $204 million, and the hospital closed its doors back in May of 2014.
NYU has already publicized its exact plans for the new Ambulatory Care Clinic, and per the Brooklyn Paper, it will include the following components:
• A new emergency department on the first floor, which will include two inpatient beds for those who need to stay the night, as well as 10 patient bays, two resuscitation room, two triage rooms, a decontamination room, and 12 other treatment spaces.
• An outpatient surgery center on the third floor, with four operating rooms and two endoscopy rooms (that’s where they stick a camera up or down one of your orifices).
• A cancer center on the fourth floor with space for 22 patients, plus a pharmacy, and a laboratory.
• A diagnostic imaging center — for X-rays and other tech that looks inside patients — on the cellar level of the new building.
The clinic is expected to open in 2018, and NYU has already awarded Skanska a $120 million contract to build the facility.
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One of the many problems is that the rest of the hospital is missing.
Are you actually so ignorant that you compare a clinic with two inpatient beds to a full service hospital? Your lack of knowledge about the context here is staggering. “Perhaps this is why the NIMBYs opposing redevelopment come across as particularly insane.” I’d rephrase that as “YIMBY supporting development coming across as insane.” And by the way, most people in this neighborhood support affordable housing, development, and are not NIMBYs, so you can spare us that tired moniker. We don’t support a 20, 30, and 40 story towers dropped into a landmarked neighborhood.
What in the world were the designers at Perkins Eastman thinking?
The proposed building has no place in the Atlantic Avenue of Cobble Hill Historic District areas. Whether the actual site is landmarked or not, the architectural firm has some professional responsibility to design a building that is compatible, in some way, with the existing environment.
Being flush with the neighboring buildings is a zoning requirement and is simply not enough to claim the design is happily engaging it’s pre-war neighbors. This multi-colored glassy facade design belongs somewhere else, perhaps along a side street in Time Square area. It will look just as sad from Atlantic Ave as it wold from Hicks street.
This whole concept is a flat out insult to the neighborhood and its residents. This will provide more neighbors with less hospital coverage and less school alternatives. Not only does it not fit the needs of the current residents, it jeopardizes everything that makes the area great. If high rises are banned from Chelsea in order to preserve the feel of the neighborhood, how on earth is this justified ? Where is DeBlasio now? He was willing to get arrested to stand for LICH yet is utterly silent when this happens? It’s a disgrace and it’s a slap in the face to the residents who have to abide by landmarks rules and pay insane taxes.