OurView : Region’s the loser as biomed project collapses

For years business and political leaders have spoken, loudly and sometimes eloquently, about the need to develop a strong biotechnology industry in Westchester and the Hudson Valley region.

And they’ll probably still be talking about this for a long time to come, now that the project with the brightest chance of expanding biotech into a major industry within our region has faded into history.

The White Plains Common Council on Feb. 5 narrowly rejected a six-month extension of approvals granted in 2002 for a $250 million biomedical campus planned by The New York-Presbyterian Hospital for its Bloomingdale Road campus. The 384,000-square-foot campus would have included a proton beam accelerator intended to treat 46 different forms of cancer, as well as research space for startups and corporate giants like IBM and GE.

More importantly, the campus would have served as a regional hub for “translational” medicine the integration of research and clinical trials for speedier results. Not to mention a generator of 472 construction jobs, 958 permanent jobs, and $321 million in economic activity.

As the Business Journal reported in 2002, IBM was to have created large databases gleaned from patients at some 50 New York-Presbyterian affiliated hospitals, to enable clinical trials on a larger scale than ever before for promising new medicines. The campus would have also been a showcase for the molecular imaging technology of GE in research designed to reduce the likelihood of stroke. And the Bourne Research Laboratory, which studies eating disorders, would have been able to expand within the center.

Another piece of the center a $100 million proton-beam accelerator would have treated 46 different forms of cancer much as the accelerator at Loma Linda (Ca.) University Medical Center has done for more than a decade.

So what went wrong with the project?

Everything.

Not even the prospect of conquering disease could sway neighbors of New York-Presbyterian. Ever since it proposed an oversized, mixed-use “City within a city” in 1981, residents have blocked the hospital at every turn, citing zoning and quality-of-life arguments; the hospital campus is zoned for up to three single-family houses per acre. Because of this feud, the city and county lost an anchor that could have brought them hundreds of new jobs, many of them generated by smaller biomedical companies.

It didn’t help that White Plains’ divided government sent very conflicting signals to New York-Presbyterian, without trying to resolve their differences.

Mayor Joseph Delfino and his administration worked closely with hospital executives as high as CEO Herbert Pardes, resulting in two proposals that would have given the city parkland the most recent one tied to a subdivision of 65 hospital acres for 143 houses that the council shot down last December.

Yet a Common Council majority took the side of hospital neighbors, who reasoned that by blocking the biomedical project, they could force New York-Presbyterian to offer all its undeveloped land, some 100 acres, to the city for a new park.

So neighbors and the hospital dug in their heels. So too did Delfino (joined by two council allies) and an increasingly hostile council majority (led by council President Rita Z. Malmud). The result: Years of wasted time and money by all sides. Even the victory of project foes is pyrrhic: The civic feuds that killed this project remain unresolved. And by promising last week to study “all options” for its property, the hospital leaves open the unsettling possibility it could pull out of town altogether, taking with it hundreds of jobs.

When New York-Presbyterian did get its way as in 2002 when it won approvals for the translational center the hospital could not get the project going. Especially damaging to the project was the squabble between corporate partners and Albany. For all former Gov. George Pataki’s talk, the state didn’t want to shell out the bucks until IBM and GE did so first. No, after you, the corporate giants told the state.

That impasse, unfortunately, lowered the hospital’s credibility with already-cynical neighbors and council members. So did the hospital’s refusal to send representatives to recent council meetings and work sessions actions which the council seized upon in voting down the six-month extension.

It was a reversion to the high-handedness the hospital showed years earlier with neighbors and officials. And it failed to salvage the biomedical project.

“That place could have been a catalyst, a place where people could look to further expand their high-tech research in a growing field,” said Anthony Campagiorni, president of the Hudson Valley Economic Development Corp., a regional business attraction group.

How true. And how sad. Here’s hoping the region’s biotech industry bounces back from this setback quickly.

Reader Comments

Please send us your comments!

Add Your Comments

TalkBack & let us know what YOU think.

If you have something to add to this discussion topic, we'd like to know.

To send a comment:

1. Enter your full name
2. Enter your email address
3. Post your comment and click 'Submit'

Full Name:

Email Address:

Example: johndoe@aol.com

Comments:
Post your comment here
(WestfairInc reserves the right to edit any text for broadcast)