City In Legal Fight To Demolish Longtime Harlem Health Center

HARLEM, NY — The battle to demolish a prominent Hamilton Heights medical center is in the midst of a legal battle by the city to build affordable supportive housing at the site.

The lawsuit is part of a multi-year effort to knock down the building, which is home to a longtime 50,000-square-foot medical center, with a much-reduced and more expensive health center as part of a 200-unit affordable housing development.

Two years ago, Patch reported on plans for redeveloping the health center, a brick building that spans a full block of city-owned land at 1727 Amsterdam Ave. between West 145th and 146th streets.

Community leaders felt blindsided by the city and were "shocked" when presented with the plans to bulldoze the health center, where one Community Board member said the demand for services — especially for mental health — was "through the roof," and replace it with a health center only a third of the size with rents twice as high.

The Community Board learned about the plans in late 2022 only after a resident noticed debris and soil samples at the site, but it was later revealed that plans to develop the lot began in 2019, according to a June Community Board 9 resolution. The board also accused the city of circumventing land review processes, not including enough housing or medical space in the plans and a raft of other issues.

The medical center would just be one part of the nine-story, 180,000-square-foot building, which would include around 200 units of affordable housing, according to Crain's, which first reported on the lawsuit.

The suit was filed against one of the tenants at the building, Heritage Health Center, in August after the primary care clinic failed to move out after a June deadline to vacate, according to court documents.

According to the complaint, the agency with jurisdiction over the site, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation — known as HHC — terminated their lease with Heritage in March 2023 and gave the clinic three months to vacate the land.

The city's suit seeks to finally evict Heritage, accusing them of trespassing.

Officials did not immediately return Patch's inquiries, but a spokesperson for the city's hospital system, which administers the land, told Crain's that they're “proud to use its land to create affordable and supportive housing for New Yorkers, because we know that stable housing makes it easier to manage a person’s health.”

In response, Heritage, whose roots could be traced back to a late 1960's community response to a dire lack of health services in Upper Manhattan, claimed that the city's termination notices were not sufficient to remove them.

Heritage maintains that, since the city accepted rent after their license with HHC expired in 2017, they had automatically become a month-to-month tenant of the space.

Their "abrupt" eviction, Heritage said, would have a "devastating impact" on the 7,400 people who receive medical services annually at their present site, and that they would "lose necessary care" if they are ejected prior to relocating to a new space a few blocks away.

That new home won't be ready until spring 2026 at the earliest, Heritage said in a legal filing.

"It is disappointing that the City of New York and HHC have shown such disregard for the Harlem community's own leaders and for its partnering institutions," the medical center's CFO said in an affidavit. "The community would be far better served if Heritage is permitted to remain in place until its new location is ready."

In court papers, Heritage says that 57 percent of their patients are Medicaid-eligible, and only 15 percent of their patients are covered by private insurance.

The city claims that they asked Heritage to leave back in 2022 and that under land use rules, Heritage could not technically be a tenant.

In a separate suit, the city is also similarly litigating against an optometrist who also has an office in the building.