Memorial Sloan-Kettering, CUNY Healthy Expansion on Upper East Side

Two new contemporary healthcare centers will soon come to the hospital corridor along the East Side of Manhattan. Mayor Bloomberg, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, CUNY announced plans to build a state-of-the-art cancer center and nursing school in a new million-square-foot building on the Upper East Side. The prominent waterfront location at 525 East 73rd Street will further highlight the city’s position at the forefront of the medical research. The project will create more than 3,200 construction jobs and nearly 830 permanent jobs, and is expected to be completed in 2017.

These two new facilities will allow both Memorial Sloan Kettering and CUNY/Hunter College to move into labs and healthcare units appropriate for the cutting-edge work and care that they both do—and they will look cool doing it.

In a deal with the city’s Economic Development Corporation, the institutions will pay $215 million for a 66,000-square-foot city-owned site at 525 East 73rd Street, a move the mayor lauded as a prime public-private partnership.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering, the world’s oldest and largest private institution devoted to cancer care, which will construct a 750,000-square-foot state of the art cancer treatment facility, will take up most of the space. The aim of the project is to prompt the development of innovative outpatient treatment programs.

CUNY Hunter College will take up the balance of the space with a new Science and Health Professions building that cover some 336,000-square-foot. The project upgrades Hunter’s science and nursing facilities and enables its faculty, researchers and students to work in a location close to its main campus on the Upper East Side. It will also provide efficient and state-of-the-art science and nursing facilities.

The project reflects the Administration’s efforts to expand science and research activity in New York City at a timely moment when the city’s science, technology and research fields are flourishing.

“Thanks to our innovative approach to economic development, today’s announcement is yet another step towards making New York City home to the world’s most talented workforce,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “Not only will these two great institutions play a critical role in creating great jobs in one of the city’s growing industries, but they usher in the innovators and medical advancements of tomorrow.”

“These new facilities will enhance New York’s already first-ranked standing in the areas of medical research, treatment and learning," he said, "and they’ll enable both Hunter College and Memorial Sloan-Kettering to carry out their life-saving missions in state-of-the-art facilities in a beautiful location overlooking the East River."

The Department of Sanitation's East 73rd Street facility was demolished in 2008 with the intention of erecting a new garage. However, when budget constraints delayed the project indefinitely, so the city to capitalize on the site.

And, as well as offering physicians and researchers an inspiring and efficient environment in which to both work and provide care, the new building, designed by Ennead Architects and Perkins Eastman, will be a bold new addition to the Manhattan skyline.