White Plains Hospital expansion is approved by city

The White Plains Common Council at its meeting on the night of August 5 gave its final approval to the current expansion plans of White Plains Hospital. The Common Council approved amendments to the hospital’s Master Plan, Special Permit and Site Plan to allow construction of a new 10-story, 475,000-square-foot building.

The new building will rise on a parcel where the hospital’s Davis Avenue garage had stood along with adjacent commercial buildings. The city previously closed the section of Davis Avenue that runs between Maple Avenue and E. Post Road.

The parcel where the new building will be constructed is bounded by S. Lexington Avenue, E. Post Road, Davis Avenue and Maple Avenue. Demolition work and clearing the site of debris is almost completed and the hospital opened a temporary at-grade parking lot on land west of S. Lexington. The hospital expansion also is expected to involve demolition of the existing medical office building at 170 Maple Ave. in about two years.

The new building would include 144 new patient rooms increasing the licensed bed count for the hospital from 292 to 436. All of the hospital’s patient rooms would become single-patient rooms. An expanded emergency room would be created. The hospital’s existing emergency room in its current main building was designed for 40,000 patients a year and currently serves approximately 80,000 patients annually. There would be new operating rooms and a new main lobby in the planned building.

The fourth floor of the new building would be dedicated to housing mechanical and air-handling equipment in a 24-foot-high space immediately above the new operating rooms. It’s expected that at some point in the future a hospital parking garage and additional hospital facilities would be built on the property currently used as the interim parking lot that formerly housed automobile dealerships along E. Post Road. The new building is expected to open in 2028.

White Plains Planning Commissioner Christopher Gomez had previously said that the city and the White Plains Urban Renewal Agency have been investigating constructing a new parking garage on the northerly side of East Post Road, across from the hospital that could serve the hospital and also have spaces designated for use by people going to the emergency room.

After the vote, Common Council Member John Martin said that the city is aware of concerns about adequate parking and increasing traffic in the vicinity of the hospital as the expansion proceeds and is working to ensure that those issues are properly handled.