NYU Langone receives $75 million gift for new West Palm Beach medical tower

NYU Langone Health will build a medical office tower in West Palm Beach with the help of a $75 million gift from the Julia Koch Family Foundation.

NYU Langone officials said the blockbuster gift will allow the non-profit health care provider to dramatically expand medical services for existing and new patients in Florida.

Koch, a part-time Palm Beach resident, is the widow of billionaire industrialist David Koch, who died at age 79 in 2019. With an estimated net worth of $59 billion, Koch is the second wealthiest woman in the world, according to a 2023 Forbes survey.

Currently, NYU Langone has smaller clinical offices in downtown West Palm Beach and Delray Beach. But the soon-to-be built Julia Koch Family Ambulatory Care Center will provide a large space for more than a dozen specialties, as well as imaging services and out-patient surgery.

Coming to West Palm Beach: NYU Langone buys downtown West Palm Beach property for medical tower

New NYU Langone Health medical tower slated to open in 2026

All will be housed at a medical office tower that will be built at 324 Datura St. and completed in 2026. The property is at the southeast corner of Datura Street and South Dixie Highway, just across the bridges to Palm Beach and around the corner from NYU Langone's existing medical offices at the 101 N. Clematis St. office building.

NYU Langone first opened its Palm Beach County offices in 2017 when it followed New York patients who spent their winters in Florida.

But the renowned health care provider began planning a major expansion a couple of years ago as its patient roster grew with the influx of residents into the county, especially from the Northeast.

Dr. Robert I. Grossman, chief executive of NYU Langone, praised the Julia Koch Family Foundation and its donation as instrumental in helping provide a new level of medical care to residents in Florida.

"It was an opportunity for Julia and her family, and they felt it would be great for the Palm Beach area," Grossman said in an exclusive interview on Feb. 16.

The $75 million gift is believed to be a record donation to a Palm Beach County health care provider.

While Palm Beach philanthropists are known for giving tens of millions of dollars to hospitals in New York, Boston and other major U.S. cities, this gift is believed to be the first time this amount of money is staying with a health care provider in Palm Beach County.

Koch's donation also is a near-record level of philanthropy for any organization in the county in recent years, dwarfed only by a $100 million gift to the University of Florida's Scripps campus in Jupiter. That 2022 donation was made in October by Dr. Herbert Wertheim, an optometrist, inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist.

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In a statement, Ken Langone, chairman of the NYU Langone Board of Trustees, said the Julia Koch Family center will fill a missing hole in the lives of New Yorkers who have come to call Palm Beach County home: "A lack of comprehensive care from the full spectrum of NYU Langone doctors who offer unmatched quality in every specialty," he said.

NYU Langone Health boasts 10 specialties in the top 10 rankings by U.S. News & World Report, including endocrinology and geriatrics, which both ranked No. 2 in the nation. In addition, NYU Langone is ranked the No. 1 physician practice by Vizient healthcare performance analysis firm each year for the safety and quality of its outpatient care.

This care is measured by several factors including mortality and infection rates and hospital admittance rates. It also takes into account patient experiences, including ease in making appointments.

"Quality and safety are the most important things to us," Grossman said. "We want the best experience for our patients."

Details of the medical tower services to be offered in West Palm tower

The 188,000-square feet, eight-story medical tower will feature 77,000 square feet of clinical services across a range of specialties.

The specialties include internal medicine, orthopedics, cardiology, gastroenterology, pulmonary, rheumatology, neurology, gynecology, urology, endocrinology and oncology. Physical therapy and rehabilitation will be offered, as well as pain management and bariatric services.

In addition, two operating rooms for outpatient surgery and two endoscopy suites will be built.

NYU Langone also will build a comprehensive imaging center featuring the latest in equipment, read by "the best trained radiologists in the country," said Andrew Rubin, vice president for Medical Center Clinical Affairs and Affiliates for NYU Langone.

The new West Palm Beach facility will employ about 200 people, including 50 physicians, Rubin said. Other employees, such as nurses, nurse practitioners and physical therapists, will be needed as well.

Ultimately, some 150,000 patients could seek care at this ambulatory care center.

"New and returning patients want more specialties, more choices and more doctors. And we're going to give it too them," Rubin said.

Already, word has spread in the medical community about the coming medical complex. NYU Langone physicians in the Northeast, as well as top doctors elsewhere, have inquired about working at the West Palm Beach offices, Rubin said.

NYU expansion years in the making

NYU Langone's West Palm Beach expansion first was disclosed last November by the Palm Beach Post, which reported that NYU Langone had filed plans with the city of West Palm Beach for a stand-alone medical tower at 324 Datura St.

In January, NYU Langone paid $33 million for the property, home to an old office building that will be torn down to make way for the medical tower.

But as far back as 2023, a top NYU Langone official revealed the provider was searching for larger medical space in downtown West Palm Beach.

Real estate sources said NYU Langone at one point even considered building a hospital in the city but backed away from the idea.

NYU Langone then was close to a deal to lease about 100,000 square feet of space in the East Tower, an office building slated to be built on Hibiscus Street at The Square by the Related Cos. of New York.

"But when you have the opportunity to have your own building, to be in a space you own and can manage, it's a win for our patients and our health care (system)," Rubin said. "This one was too good to pass up."

The new Datura site will be easy for patients to get to from Palm Beach, as well as from the rest of the county. Patients from counties to the north and south also are expected to seek treatment there, Rubin said.

NYU Langone gift marks new investment by a new foundation

Up until now, Julia Koch has been a quiet philanthropic force along with her late husband, David, an industrialist, conservative political powerhouse and philanthropist.

After his death, Julia Koch continued her leadership of the David H. Koch Foundation, which has given millions to hospitals and universities, including $4.4 million in two prior gifts to NYU Langone.

As recently as 2023, the David H. Koch Foundation also gave $5 million to the Cox Science Center in West Palm Beach.

Last year, Koch created her own family foundation, selecting NYU Langone as one of its first major gift recipients in a high-profile move. A statement by the foundation said it will focus on initiatives in healthcare, education and the arts.

Grossman said the Julia Koch family gift is a critical donation, but it may not be the last. "We have a lot of generous support there," he said of Palm Beach County.

Indeed, the medical center is named after Langone, Home Depot's co-founder and a resident of the exclusive Lost Tree Village community near North Palm Beach.

In addition, former Marvel Entertainment Chairman Isaac Perlmutter, a Palm Beach resident, gave $50 million to NYU Langone's cancer center in 2014. The cancer center was renamed after Perlmutter and his wife, Laura.

Alexandra Clough is a business writer at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at aclough@pbpost.com. X: @acloughpbp. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Julia Koch gives $75M for NYU Langone medical center in West Palm Beach