John Gilbert, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President of Rudin Management, provided an overview of the Rudin family's involvement in New York City including its 100 year history as property owners and managers in the city in such projects as 3 Times Square (Reuter's Building), 32 Ave of the Americas, as well as it history of working with institutions like Lincoln Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering, and Central Park Conservancy.  He stated that the Rudin family was excited about the project and was committed from this early stage in the process to listen to the Community Working Group and the community and to come back to the community with a design for its part of the project for residential development that is in context with the neighborhood.  He also mentioned that the Rudin family had recently selected FX Fowle as its architect for the project.   

Maria Papola then led a discussion of the planned use of green technology in the new hospital including its health and community benefits, environmental benefits and operational and economic benefits.  The primary guiding principles for the green technology include:

• Protect the immediate health of building occupants
• Protect the health of the surrounding community
• Protect the health of the global community and natural resources

She described that the intent of green design, or sustainable design, is to produce places, products and services that reduce the use of non-renewable resources, minimizes environmental impact, and relates to people within the natural environment.

The hospital will be guided in its green technology by the U.S. Green Building Council and its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System.  LEED is a voluntary, consensus-based national rating system for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings.

Based on scientific standards, LEED emphasizes state of the art strategies for sustainable site development, water savings, energy efficiency, materials selection and indoor environmental quality. It was noted that the Green Guide for Healthcare(GGHC) was created by the American Society for Healthcare Engineering as a tool for applying the LEED rating system to the healthcare environment.  It was estimated that by using green technologies, St. Vincent's would save an average of 30% on energy, 35% on carbon emissions, 30% to 50% on water use, and 30% to 50% on waste cost.

Bernadette Kingham-Bez, Senior Vice President of Planning, Communications and Marketing provided an update of new developments at Saint Vincent's.  She shared that the system is close to emerging from bankruptcy, including that the disclosure statement for the Plan of Reorganization had been approved the US Bankruptcy Court earlier in the week. A confirmation hearing on the plan will be held in late July and Saint Vincent's is hopeful that it will emerge from bankruptcy by the end of August on financially very stable ground. 

She also provided some operational updates including the placement of a mobile CT scanner on 12^th Street which was necessary as St. Vincent's had to replace one of its CT scanners in the hospital.  While that CT scanner was not operational, St. Vincent's needed to use the mobile unit to insure that it had the necessary two scanners to operate as a Level 1 Trauma Center.  This unit is in addition to the mobile cardiac catheterization lab on 11^th Street.  Unfortunately the hospital is using the two mobile ‘band aids' to meet service needs and replace some old technology.  She recognized it is an ongoing challenge and apologized for the inconvenience. 

She also shared that St. Vincent's is also facing a constant increase in emergency room visits in very constrained facility.  The hospital is going to ask for an approval of a small extension - about 1,500 feet-- to fill in under the 11^th Street portico.  There is a need to reorganize the emergency room to be more efficient, as it was built for approximately 40,000 visits per year, but now has about 60,000 visits. This is another short-term solution, but necessary to accommodate patients until the new hospital is built. 

Both Maria Papola and Bernadette Kingham-Bez gave an overview of the architect, engineer and space planning process. St. Vincent's is looking at the incidence of disease, the projected hospitalizations, and how to decentralize ambulatory care. The hospital is going to be doing an analysis projecting inpatient bed need, emergency room projected volumes, especially in light of the closure of Cabrini Medical Center and St. Vincent's Midtown.

St. Vincent's is also reviewing architectural and engineering firms and expects to make a selection in the coming weeks.  Once selected, their charge over the summer, while the hospital is doing its demand analysis, will be to develop the concepts for building façade, building shape, to perform some sub surface analysis to get a better sense of what is below the building, analyzing how deep we can dig to figure out how many floors we can put below grade, and also to develop engineering guidelines.  The selected firm will ultimately take the demand analysis and interpret it into a revised space program. The goal is to make the building smaller and as efficient as possible.  The hospital will share with them all of the observations that have been made at the Community Working Group meetings as well as the correspondences with the Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation.  

The meeting then opened up to general discussion and questions.  One participant asked about the number of patients who come to St. Vincent's emergency room for a non- emergency care. St. Vincent's sees approximately 150 to 200 people a day, the vast majority have a true emergency. 

There was also discussion about the closings of Cabrini Medical Center and St. Vincent's Midtown and what would happen with the properties.  It was noted that Cabrini is not related to Saint Vincent's.  The mandate of the Berger commission and the Department of Health's interpretation is that the sale of the institutions' property is required to cover the hospital's closing costs. The state will not help them close, it will only provide a small amount of assistance to cover gaps between their assets and their liability.   St. Vincent's is working with its sister hospital, St. Vincent's Midtown, to try and preserve some of its services, specifically its HIV Center and family health center to meet healthcare needs.  The hospital expects that the 12^th Street emergency room will see more visits because of the hospital closures.

The meeting then reviewed the letter sent by GVSHP and two block associations, two adjacent building co-op boards, three property owners in proximity to the hospital and a local neighbor, as well as the response from Saint Vincent's.  A representative of GVSHP expressed concerns of the organization especially regarding the overall density and would like to see, in agreement with the hospital, that the overall density on the current hospital sites not be increased, and ideally be decreased. Referencing the Coleman pavilion, which he said is far and away one of the largest buildings in Greenwich Village, GVSHP would like to ensure that no single new building is twice the size of this building.  GVSHP would like St. Vincent's to explore the possibility of reducing the planned density on the O'Toole site by looking at ways in which some of what is being contemplated for that site could be located across the street on the east side of 7^th Avenue.  St. Vincent's responded that it plans to focus on emergency care, and medical and surgical services primarily in the new facility.

GVSHP also wanted to encourage St. Vincent's to think about some of the existing buildings that could be maintained and reused as opposed to being demolished.  Reusing some of the buildings might have a positive impact. He stated that the hospital is within a historic district and by landmarks regulations, if there are buildings that are considered to be in character with the historic district, should be preserved, or perhaps modestly altered.

Saint Vincent's discussed that size estimates for the new hospital were very tentative and that the needs analysis will yield a more exact size.  It was discussed that there are a lot of reasons for the hospital to make it as small and efficient as possible including the cost per square foot to build.  The hospital is just at the beginning of its analysis.  It reiterated it has heard the concerns of the various stakeholders and in addition to those mentioned was also cognizant of community concerns regarding the subway station access and the Triangle. 

There was discussion about why the O'Toole site has been chosen - as opposed to renovating the existing facility. The hospital did look at renovating the existing hospital floor by floor, but it would cost $350 million in 2006 money, would take over 10 years to complete, would be disruptive to patient care, and would not yield the needed clinical and technology improvements of a new facility. 

There was some questions raised about the business aspects of the proposal for the Rudin family  and St. Vincent's.  St. Vincent's noted that the MOU was publicly available and would be shared with interested community members.  It was also noted that St. Vincent's is a non-for-profit organization with limited resources and needed to work with the community to figure out how to best meet the healthcare needs of the communities it serves.  John Gilbert noted that there was significant risk involved in the project from the perspective of the Rudin family and it was not possible to project a financial return.

Dr. Carol Barsky, chair of Emergency Medicine, sought to encourage the group to think about what kind of hospital it wants in the community. She stated that - conceptually the hospital would all like to see the most attractive, accessible, traffic friendly, welcoming safest hospital in the city - yet there isn't a large campus- and it is limited by the NYC grid.  Additionally, she stated this is not about making money and the hospital doesn't have a huge endowment.  The hospital exists on the care it provides- one of the few in New York City who lives on its medical mission - and wants to succeed in making a medical mission that is responsive to the community. She noted that the hospital brought in The Rudins so that it had an influx of needed capital to make necessary investment in equipment, technology, and facilities.

It was announced that there would not be a meeting in July as the first Wednesday was July 4^th, the hospital and Community Working Group would communicate about whether there would be an August meeting if there were agenda items.