NYU Langone Health plans to build new $1B teaching hospital, research center in Melville

NYU Langone Health plans to spend at least $1 billion on a new teaching hospital and research center in Melville at the Huntington Quadrangle, Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine told Newsday.

The plan would represent a major expansion of the health system in Suffolk County on the site of one of Long Island’s oldest office parks. It would create hundreds of construction and healthcare jobs, Romaine said.

“They’re going to be a game changer,” he said.

NYU Langone spokesman Steve Ritea declined to comment on the plan, which it has not shared publicly.

The We’re Group, whose buildings at 1 and 2 Huntington Quadrangle would be the potential site of the medical complex, did not respond to a request for comment. 

If completed, the new medical facility would transform an aging office complex into a major source of economic growth in a section of Melville that the Town of Huntington has identified for redevelopment as a walkable neighborhood with housing, Suffolk officials said. 

Steel Equities, a Bethpage-based developer, received town approval last month for a major mixed-used development on 16 acres at 75 Maxess Road on the site of a vacant industrial building. The complex would include 400 residential units — 290 rentals and 110 for-sale condos as well as retail space.

Huntington Town Supervisor Ed Smyth told Newsday the town has not received any application from NYU Langone related to the project. If NYU Langone were to move forward, Smyth said he would support the health system bringing a major medical facility to the area but any project would be subject to significant public input.

“It’s a project of a scale that you can’t overstate the positive economic impact it would have for the region," Smyth said. 

Until the health system formalizes its plan, Smyth said it's unclear what relief NYU Langone would need to move forward.

Long Island Business News previously reported on the health system’s agreement to acquire 1 and 2 Huntington Quadrangle in Melville.

Romaine said the transaction had not yet closed. 

“The county government will work hand in glove with NYU Langone to make sure that the process moves forward and doesn't have any speed bumps” that delay the project from being completed, Romaine said.

The two four-story buildings, built in the early 1970s on 45 acres adjacent to Route 110, have about 765,000 square feet of rentable space, according to CoStar, a provider of commercial real estate data.

NYU Langone had previously considered opening a teaching hospital on the campus of Nassau Community College in Uniondale, Newsday reported in 2023. But Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said last year the county and the health system "mutually agreed to a pause which will allow NYU Langone the ability to explore other options."

Blakeman said at the time "regulatory, technical, cost and timing" concerns all contributed to the health system moving on from the Nassau plan. 

The health system also previously had been in negotiations to purchase the Canon U.S.A. headquarters in Melville, Romaine and Smyth confirmed, but the two sides could not reach a deal

A Canon spokesman wasn’t immediately able to answer Newsday’s questions.

Property owner The We’re Group has considered redeveloping the Quadrangle buildings for more than a decade. The property owner had floated a future mixed-use residential development in 2015 that never came to fruition, Newsday reported at the time. It sold 3 Huntington Quadrangle for $35.8 million in 2016.

 A new hospital would require state Department of Health certificate-of-need approval before it could move forward. The Health Department has not received an application from NYU Langone regarding a new Melville hospital, spokesman John Emery told Newsday.

 The site offers a prime location near Route 110 and the Long Island Expressway that is attractive to a health system because of its accessibility for patients, said Craig Weiss, president of T. Weiss Realty, which owns 500,000 square feet of office space in Melville nearby. 

Weiss said while major health systems Northwell Health and Catholic Health have administrative offices nearby in Melville, the area has a less significant presence of medical providers. He said NYU Langone's arrival to the area could create greater demand for offices, housing and food-based businesses in the area. 

"A rising tide lifts all ships," he said.  

The health system has expanded significantly on Long Island in the past decade, finalizing its acquisition of the 591-bed former Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola in 2019. Last March, NYU Langone acquired the 306-bed NYU Langone Hospital — Suffolk in East Patchogue.

NYU Langone Health, which includes the system’s seven hospitals and its affiliated medical schools, generated a combined $15.4 billion in operating revenue in its most recent fiscal year, which ended Aug. 31.

NYU Langone opened its tuition-free NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine in Mineola 2019 — following a 2018 tuition-free rollout at its Manhattan medical school — after the Long Island medical school received a $200 million donation from Ken and Elaine Langone. Ken Langone, who chairs NYU Langone Health, co-founded Home Depot. 

Newsday’s Lisa L. Colangelo contributed to this story.