Community activism defeated Montefiore's plans

After Montefiore Medical Center and the Simone Development Companies’ plans for a large new facility on Riverdale Avenue drew a torrent of backlash from the community, the two organizations — giants in their respective fields — might well have hoped to wait things out and build once the clamor subsided.

However, activists like Jim Grossman and Stuart Gartner maintained the pressure, even when Montefiore and Simone declined to attend Community Board (CB) 8 meetings about their plans. During one memorable session in February 2014, Mr. Gartner, a lawyer, railed in the direction of an empty chair representing “Mr. Montefiore.”

“They came to the first meeting and told us that there was a need for this polyclinic in our community. They’ve hidden that secret report,” he said. “It must be the same report to get us out of Vietnam. Where is the report? Why haven’t they shown us? Where is the need for this in our community?”

Over the following months, Mr. Gartner and Mr. Grossman organized tenants in their building and other community members into an informal opposition called the Committee to Protect Riverdale. The group even pooled members’ funds to hire an attorney to press their case to the state health commissioner and the city’s building commissioner. Granted, a hospital is hardly a harbinger of blight for a community, but the point was that residents did not want or need one here.

In the meantime, Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz and state Sen. Jeff Klein heeded their constituents’ calls and passed legislation with the potential to create a bureaucratic nightmare for Montefiore. The health care provider shrank its proposal from 11 to six stories in order to avoid a lengthy new state review process — even though the review was supposed to apply to ambulatory centers taller than three stories — but no one was fooled.

In the face of multipronged, unrelenting yet through and through civil opposition, Montefiore and Simone announced they were withdrawing their plans on March 13.