Upper West Side Rezoning Plan Is Set to Pass

Neighborhood groups are only three weeks away from final passage of a resolution two years in the making that would restrict how tall new buildings can climb on the Upper West Side.

But as the resolution moved through the public review process this summer, the Jewish Home and Hospital on 106th Street filed for a special exemption from the new rules. The nursing home wants to demolish part of its current location between Broadway and Amsterdam to construct an upgraded 15-story nursing facility and to sell a parcel of land to a developer for a 14-story private residential building.

The proposed building heights are legal according to current zoning law, but would not
be allowed under codes that will likely get city approval in the next few weeks because they are not considered consistent with the neighborhood’s low-scale character.
Members of Community Board 7 and citizen groups like the West Siders for Responsible Development heightened their efforts to rezone as they watched Extell Development Corporation’s twin 31- and 37-story luxury condominiums inch skyward from their lots on Broadway near 100th street, a project that started in 2005.

“The large purpose of the rezoning was to maintain the context of the Manhattan Valley Community,” Sheldon Fine, chair of Community Board 7, said. “It [the Home and Hospital’s plan] is undoing what the rezoning plans to do.”

Fine was pleasantly surprised that more developers didn’t file applications to build tall buildings before the new zoning is approved.

Bruce Nathanson, the Senior Vice President of the Jewish Home and Hospital, said that the prospect of a more restrictive zoning code did not figure into their plans to renovate. Officials from the Home said they didn’t realize until well into the process that the new zoning would restrict its development, even though meetings to develop the new code were held in their conference space.

“We had no idea what was going on in our own auditorium. I am perhaps foolish but not disrespectful,” said Audrey Weiner, president and CEO of the Home, at a CB7 meeting in July.

The state’s Department of Health recently cut back the number of beds that it, and hospitals statewide, had to provide, so the Home was attempting to downsize in-house services and expand its home health care program.

It decided to sell part of its property to fund its new “state of the art” facility, Nathanson said, and it was necessary to build to 15 stories to “recoup the dollars” spent.

“Theoretically, we could have built a 28-story tower,” said Nathanson. “We didn’t want to do that.”

He added that the Jewish Home and Hospital has been negotiating “around the clock” with CB7 and city council member Melissa Mark-Viverito’s office, and expected the groups would reach a compromise by the middle of the month.

“Any negotiation will end up less than ideal, but we’re hoping to move it closer and closer,” Fine said.