New York city and state officials have announced that they’ve broken ground on a new life sciences complex coming to Kips Bay, which will notably end up housing the nearby NYC medical examiner’s office–and kick out the city’s Public Health Lab.
SPARC (Science Park and Research Campus) Kips Bay will also integrate three CUNY schools, create a new public-health-centered high-school, establish “outpatient ambulatory care services and a training simulation center for NYC Health + Hospitals,” and include retail and commercial space.
At present, the medical examiner’s facility is located at East 30th Street. SPARC Kips Bay will be built a few blocks away, at 455 First Ave., where the Public Health Lab is currently located. After demolition, which is slated to be completed in the coming months, the lab will end up being permanently relocated to a newly built space in Harlem. SPARC is slated to be completed in 2027.
At a press conference on Dec. 23, CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez said that “SPARC is expected to generate approximately $42 billion in economic impact over the next 30 years, create about 15,000 new jobs, and provide 2 million square feet of academic public health and life science space.”
“Once complete,” Mayor Adams said, “this is where we will invent new vaccines, cure chronic diseases, and unlock the knowledge that will help millions of people live longer and healthier lives.”
New York Governor Kathy Hochul showed up for the announcement as well, and said that “SPARC Kips Bay is just a sign of [a] $1.6-billion transformation. That sounds like a pipe dream, but it’s happening right now. Shovels are in some ground out there.”
In a separate statement, New York Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Jason Graham said that “the SPARC Kips Bay project heralds a new era for our agency and the neighborhood we have called home for more than a century.
“With the groundbreaking today, we take a concrete step toward the vision of a state-of-the-art forensic pathology center that will serve New Yorkers 24/7 and educate the next generation of leaders in forensic science and medicine.”
Details of the medical examiners’s office swooping onto the Public Health Lab’s turf have been public knowledge for quite some time, with the Economic Development Corporation pointing out that a new medical examiner’s office would be a part of SPARC when it was first announced, back in Oct. 2022.
The ME’s office, the largest in the US, estimates that it investigates “approximately” 40,000 deaths per year. Founded in 1918, it boasts of having the largest public DNA crime laboratory in the world, as well as the only in-house molecular genetics laboratory in the US.
They’ve also been getting some bespoke initiatives off the ground in 2025, including the Genetic Intervention Family Testing Services (GIFTS) program, which screens “at-risk family members of those who die from inherited conditions, at no cost.”
The Public Health Lab, meanwhile, has been around since 1892–and proudly points out that it was the first “municipal bacteriological laboratory” in the world.
The lab essentially serves as a citywide epidemiological threat monitor, per its website, which notes that it is responsible for: “Community testing for tuberculosis and sexual-health-associated diseases; antibiotic resistance testing; foodborne-disease investigations; outbreak response (Ebola, Legionnaires’ disease, COVID-19, mpox); whole-genome sequencing; beach water and wastewater pathogen monitoring; and biothreat agent testing.”