On Monday, September 30, the Civic Council will hold a public forum on the proposed expansion of New York Methodist Hospital (NYMH). The forum will take place at Congregation Beth Elohim, 8th Avenue & Garfield Place, starting at 6:30 PM. At this forum NYMH will present a revised plan for constructing an outpatient care center on a portion of the block bounded by 5th and 6th Streets and 7th and 8th Avenues.
NYMH presented preliminary plans for the new building on July 19 at a joint PSCC/CB6 Landmarks-Land Use Committee meeting. The revisions NYMH will present at this meeting are based on community input received at that meeting and via subsequent e-mail messages. The purpose of this forum is to provide the public with the opportunity to see the revised proposal and to provide additional input. There will be further opportunities for public comment at Community Board Six (CB6) meetings.
The Park Slope Civic Council has a history of active involvement with expansions of the NYMH facility, because it is part and parcel of our mission statement:
“The Park Slope Civic Council’s mission is to understand the concerns of the various Park Slope constituencies and to select and implement effective responses through events, activities, and advocacy efforts that engage the community and enhance our quality of life.”
We are committed to ensuring that “the various Park Slope constituencies” – which include residents and NYMH – fully comprehend each other’s concerns. Furthermore, we are committed to ensuring that NYMH fulfills commitments it made in 2009 in respect of potential expansion, specifically:
- NYMH shall endeavor that the architectural design of any construction or development of the property shall make every effort to preserve and add to the neighborhood’s “sense of place,” with the understanding that the Hospital’s need to provide quality patient care must be its paramount consideration.
- NYMH agrees to give serious consideration to the comments raised by the community and, if the comments are not to be incorporated into the final plans for the construction or development, to provide an explanation as to why the comments were not incorporated.
Our commitment goes beyond these measures. We will have at least one of our Board members, several of whom are practicing architects, to oversee and comment in detail on the design. And should construction take place, we will have one of our Board members with experience in construction management, assisted by others, monitoring construction impacts and advocating on behalf of the community for NYMH to mitigate them. These impacts are not limited to traffic and include, among others, the noise and dust that are part and parcel of any construction.
NYMH has set up an e-mail address for comments on this project: build@nym.org. We urge you to follow our Web site, the NYMH Web site (www.nym.org), and the Community Board Six Web site (www.brooklyncb6.org), for news concerning this project, in particular the calendar (Civic Council and CB6).