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Ms. Gay is a member of the editorial board.
In a quiet neighborhood on the Upper East Side of New York, scientists are conducting life-saving research in an old, former trade school with asbestos floors.
This is the absurd reality of the New York Blood Center, which is an important part of the region’s health infrastructure and is in urgent need of a complete facelift.
The research non-profit organization oversees the distribution of most of the blood supply in New York City and its suburbs. Its work has played an important role in groundbreaking research on dozens of diseases, even though its home-a nearly 100-year-old three-story brick house on East 67th Street-has been severely outdated, limiting its potential . Need more than ever.
Finally, the plan to build the modern facilities required for the blood center is advancing. But neighbors in the Upper East Side have mobilized against it, believing that the proposed 16-story life science tower will block sunlight from reaching the park across the street.
Ben Kallos, a member of Parliament representing the region, strongly opposed the proposal. Usually, this puts New York City projects into trouble. The 51-member City Council of New York City almost always follows the wishes of local members on land use projects.
Speaking of the blood center, the city council seems to have finally found its voice.
In an unusual move, the committee seems to be ready to vote to re-divide the land where the blood center is located to pave the way for the construction of the tower, despite the objections of Mr. Carlos. The rezoning plan before the council will remove height restrictions and allow the blood center to build higher facilities to fund the facilities it needs. According to the current proposal, the blood center will occupy a quarter of the 233-foot-tall tower.
In a telephone conversation, Mr. Carlos called the blood center's proposal "an overly beautified office building."
In fact, the rest of the building will be filled by other research institutions and biotech companies. New development projects can receive a tax benefit of US$100 million in 20-25 years. According to the existing tax incentives provided by the New York City Industrial Development Agency (a public welfare company managed by the City of New York) for businesses, the project will be eligible for this benefit.
This is a good investment in New York, which has huge public health needs and is increasingly betting its economic future on the life sciences industry. As part of the agreement, St. Catherine’s Park across the street will receive $7 million from the city for improvements, such as the replacement of playgrounds and sidewalks. The blood center will provide an additional $3.6 million for the park and $2 million for a public school across the street.
In order to prevent the last moment of the project, the owner of a nearby luxurious building protested against the rezoning, triggering a little-known clause in the city's charter. Now repartitioning may require an absolute majority of 39 members instead of 26.
Although the vast majority of members of the city council support the project, at least some members are wary of overriding their colleagues’ objections and breaking with customs.
Although the opinions of the community are important, instinctively following the wishes of individual local councilors is not always in the city’s best interests. Sometimes the community tries to stop providing affordable housing where it is most needed. Sometimes they try to keep black and Latino children away from neighborhood schools.
This is a time that requires political courage.
Although the blood center is unremarkable, it plays a key role in the city's healthcare ecosystem. It also studies diseases and viruses that severely affect marginalized communities, such as sickle cell disease, HIV, and diabetes. If the city council can gain a firm foothold, it can set an important precedent and show through actions that it is ready to advance development that is in the interests of the entire city.
Blood centers are also important outside of New York City. In the past 57 years, its work has contributed to major medical breakthroughs. The work done by the center’s researchers helped develop an HIV vaccine candidate, as well as vaccines against SARS and MERS. They invented a low-cost hepatitis B vaccine. Their work helped to create a new treatment for sickle cell disease, and this work continues. The center created the first public cord blood bank to support transplant patients. Its scientists are studying therapies for blindness, deafness, autism, brain damage and Alzheimer's disease.
It's hard to imagine all this when standing in the center's current home. This building is more suitable for a museum than a world-class research facility.
Modern laboratory equipment is located on old wooden and laminate built-in parts that were once used by trade school students.
The huge liquid nitrogen freezer is located in the basement, away from the main laboratory, because the building is not strong enough to support them on the floor above.
There is also a room in the basement, which is filled with dozens of freezers, and they don't look out of place in an ordinary American garage. Barry Greene, vice president of the center, said that the freezer contains blood samples from various blood-borne diseases, including some of the earliest known HIV samples in the United States.
Mr. Carlos and others who opposed the project said that the new blood center should be built smaller, or simply moved elsewhere.
This is a bad idea for many reasons. First of all, the blood center owns the current building, which is an asset that can be utilized. It can't afford new real estate. The blood center is only a short walk from the Weill Cornell School of Medicine and Rockefeller University-the distance allows for greater collaboration. It should stay nearby, in the center of the city's thriving life science corridor.
The center also played another important role: holding meetings for local community committees in the faded red seats in the auditorium of the current building, which can be traced back to the trade school.
The Upper East Side’s concerns about sunlight and open space are real and effective. They just have no reason to cancel the modernization project of a key part of New York's health care system that serves the entire city and millions of people beyond its borders.
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