The City Council unanimously approved this week a rezoning of 51 blocks on the Upper West Side to limit most building heights to 14 stories on Broadway, 10 to 11 stories along the other avenues and 6 to 7 stories on the side streets in the area bounded by 97th and 110th Streets and Central Park West and Riverside Drive.

The rezoning, which was approved Tuesday, was a response to Extell Developments's 37- and 31-story condo towers, known as Ariel East and Ariel West on Broadway between 99th and 100th Streets and now nearing completion. Community activists were concerned that the area would be "overrun" with tall towers.

The rezoning affected the plans of The Jewish Home and Hospital, which occupies about three quarters of the block between 105th and 106th Streets and Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues, to redevelop its site.

The institution wanted to demolish its several buildings on the block and replace them with a new building for the institution and a new condominium apartment building that would help pay the costs of the project.

Its plans had called for a new, 15-story, nursing home structure that would be built on the west end of its property on 106th Street and a new, 14-story, condo building that would be built on the east end, and much of the frontage on 105th Street would be open and green.

Both proposed buildings, however, exceeded a 12-story height limitation contained in a rezoning of the area that had been recently approved by Community Board 7, the Borough President and by the City Planning Commission.

The apartment building would contain about 300 units, according to Martin Siefering of Perkins Eastman Architects, which has prepared the institution's plan. Mr. Siefering told CityRealty.com at a recent standing-room-only community meeting a developer for the condo building has not yet been selected.

The institution had claimed it was initially unaware of the planned rezoning and several leading community activists were sharply critical of its plans on the grounds that an exception to the proposed zoning would "undermine and create loopholes in this hard-won community process" at the last minute.

As a result of the objections from the community activists, the institution agreed to a "covenant" that would limit the height of its new building to 150 feet as opposed to the previously planned height of 175 feet and also limit the height of the planned residential building to 120 feet as opposed to the 145 feet previously planned.

Bruce Nathanson, senior vice president of the institution, told a community meeting that its physical plant was "inefficient and outmoded" and that the proposed new facility will have 386 beds as compared to the present count of 514 to comply with a mandate by the New York State Department of Health to "downsize."

The institution had proposed that it be exempted from the new zoning if it used "green" building standards, provided "safe, comparable and affordable housing" for its staff and retirees who are tenants in two of its buildings now, and also provided low-income affordable housing on land it owns on 107th Street."

There are much taller buildings than what the institution proposed in the vicinity such as the redevelopment of the former cancer hospital a block away on Central Park West and many towers nearby to the south on Amsterdam Avenue.