NYU Langone Health scrapped its $3 billion project to build a hospital at Nassau Community College due to technical factors that proved to be “too burdensome,” despite initially touting it as an opportunity to expand specialty services and medical technologies to Long Island. Now, Long Island lawmakers are demanding greater transparency about what led to the change.
The project was announced in May 2023 as a 40-acre, state-of-the-art academic medical center that would create thousands of jobs for health care workers across Nassau County. In a statement to WSN, hospital spokesperson James Iorio said NYU Langone will continue to explore alternative locations for a new site on Long Island.
“Unfortunately, despite our best efforts to work through a number of technical issues, we are unable to proceed with this specific location,” Ioirio said. “We remain dedicated to the project as originally envisioned: One that would include a teaching hospital, medical education, and a research facility.”
Iorio did not detail the specific reason for the project’s termination.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, a Republican who is running for reelection in November, said in a statement to Newsday that county officials and hospital administrators mutually agreed to pause the project due to “regulatory, technical, cost and timing” concerns. Kenneth Langone, the medical center’s namesake, said it was “just too complicated” to establish the facility on a campus.
“We considered all the things that had to be done and they’re certainly manageable but there’s a lot of moving parts,” Langone told Newsday. “We just made a decision, ‘we’re going to cool it.’”
Langone said he has spoken with other county officials and is scoping out other prospective sites. NYU Langone and NCC officials talked to Japanese medical equipment corporation Canon USA about purchasing their office building to create a 20-story hospital in Suffolk County. The hospital also looked into renovating a 72-acre vacant mall along Sunrise Highway in Nassau County.
Democratic lawmakers in the area have since raised questions about what caused the termination, claiming they were not included in the decision-making process. Legislator Delia DeRiggi-Whitton sent a letter to Blakeman on Friday, demanding a hearing to review what specifically led to the initiative’s pause. She said that since he and Langone, a Republican megadonor, first announced the project at NCC’s 2023 graduation ceremony, other city officials rarely received updates on its progress.
Jerry Kornbluth, NCC’s vice president for community and governmental relations, also told Newsday that the college was not informed of the project’s termination until days before it was announced. Langone administrators had been set to visit the site March 24 — the same day its cancellation was publicized.
“We really need to find out what happened and what the future plans or locations are if any,” DeRiggi-Whitton said in an interview with Newsday. “County Executive Blakeman spent two years parading around a $3 billion fantasy, and now that it’s crashed and burned, he didn’t even have the decency to tell the college or the legislature it was dead.”
Kornbluth said that architects had worked with the college to build the hospital in a location that minimizes disruption to campus operations, and that all parties seemed content with the plans.
He said that while the medical center was “not a cheap proposition” and required a new power facility, it “didn’t seem insurmountable.”
The hospital was envisioned as a comprehensive facility to address Suffolk County’s growing concerns around chronic illness, behavioral challenges and socioeconomic disparities by integrating a hospital, education institution and research center. Since affiliating with Long Island Community Hospital in May 2023, NYU Langone has expanded its advanced cancer and neurological treatment programs, drawing more than 4,000 new patients to the facility.
Over the past few years, NYU Langone has expanded its presence on Long Island with an $11.5 million pediatric clinic, $6 million improvements to postpartum units and a 260,000-square-foot ambulatory care center. Most recently, it officially merged with Long Island Community Hospital to build the medical center’s seventh inpatient facility.
Correction, April 11: A previous version of this article misstated the location of the planned hospital. It would have been in Nassau County, not Suffolk County. James Iorio’s last name was also spelled incorrectly on one of its references. The article has been updated and WSN regrets the errors.
Contact Amanda Chen at [email protected].
