Einstein Montefiore Hospital Proposed New Life Science Building

 

Former Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. now Senior Vice-President, Strategic Initiatives for Montefiore Einstein Hospital was the guest speaker at the Morris Park Community Association Wednesday night. The former borough president was there to introduce a proposed new Life Sciences building which would allow Montefiore Einstein Hospital to expand, as Diaz Jr. would say the hospital needs more space. He also mentioned that there was a one billion dollar endowment to allow for free tuition for all Einstein medical students. 

With the Metro North Rezoning, Diaz Jr. said there was a once in a lifetime opportunity for the hospital to build the new World Class Life Sciences building. People would no longer need to go to Manhattan because the needed facilities would be on the Einstein Montefiore campus. Diaz Jr. mentioned that the hospital would be seeking patients with private health insurance since the hospital did not get reimbursed as much by public health insurance. He said people would come from all over the nation, as would some of the staff.

After the presentation and timeline where Diaz Jr. mentioned that the hospital would have to go through the land use process to change the zoning from R4 to R6 to allow for a taller building that could take up to ten years to complete, but he wanted to bring it to the community before the community heard it from elsewhere. There would be two levels of parking, then several floors of doctors and equipment with the top half of the building housing the patients. 

How tall would the building be? Diaz Jr. said that the hospital wanted to compete with other hospitals, and that the building would be twenty-six stories high, which let out gasps from many in the audience. Then Diaz Jr. mentioned the floors would be higher than regular residential floors because of the complex bigger equipment that would be used, instead of a regular ten foot floor height, the average floor height would be much higher, finally saying the building would be four-hundred and fifty-four (454) feet high which would be twenty six feet higher than the current tallest building in the Bronx at River Park Towers. 

When told of a Montefiore building proposed for Riverdale at eleven stories that was reduced to six stories and eventually scrapped after much community opposition. Diaz Jr. said, yes, we could cut down the height, but then we would have to give lesser quality care by cutting back on some items. He mentioned the hospital owns three homes on an adjacent block which when fact checked turns out to be five homes,  and others in the surrounding community. Diaz Jr. said that he would be going around to the different community organizations to give this presentation much like the people from Bally's have done with their proposal of a casino in Ferry Point Park, where over seventeen acres of parkland would have to be alienated to build a casino and hotel. 

Former Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. was hired by Montefiore Hospital to find ways to expand the Einstein campus with what is now proposed to be the tallest building in the Bronx at 454 feet high.

The area where the new proposed building would sit compared to the rest of the Einstein campus, with a view of what the building would look like from street level on the lower left.