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Rudin Breaks Ground on West Village Park


A rendering of Rudin Management Co.’s Greenwich Village park. PHOTO: HAYES DAVIDSON

Emily Nonko
Feb. 22, 2015

Rudin Management Co. is making good on the promises it made to the Greenwich Village community when it cut its 2011 deal to redevelop the site of St. Vincent’s Hospital as luxury apartments.

The latest sign of this: Rudin has broken ground on a 16,000-square-foot park it promised to develop on Seventh Avenue between Greenwich Avenue and West 12th Street. The triangular park will feature the city’s first major AIDS memorial as well as play areas, a lawn and water jets.

Rudin is paying the $10 million cost of the park, which is scheduled to open this summer. “It’s designed to be a classic West Village park,” said Bill Rudin, the company’s chief executive.

Rudin is developing 200 condominiums and five townhouses at the site of the old hospital, which sought bankruptcy protection in 2010. Community groups opposed to the hospital’s closure fought the plan. Eventually Rudin got city approval after promising to develop the park and donating the former O’Toole Building, of the St. Vincent’s complex, for a medical center.

The 160,000-square-foot Lenox Hill HealthPlex opened this summer and offers 24-hour emergency care.

The Greenwich Village community board initially opposed the redevelopment. But Bob Gormley, the board’s district manager, said there is a lot of excitement among board members about the park. “[Rudin] was very inclusive with the community board for the design,” he said.

The park was designed by architecture firm M. Paul Friedberg & Partners. Studio a+i designed the 1,600-square-foot memorial, a structural canopy with a geometric design.

The first phase of the residential development, The Greenwich Lane, is expected to be completed this year. Buyers have signed contracts for 148 of the 200 condos, with average prices of about $3,500 a square foot, according to a Rudin spokesman

PHOTO: HAYES DAVIDSON