NEW YORK - Manhattan residents attended a community meeting Thursday to discuss the transformation of Mount Sinai Beth Israel.

This comes weeks after the hospital unveiled the first phase of its $500 million restructuring plan.

Under the plan, the hospital's East Side facility will be closed and a new hospital network dubbed "Mount Sinai Downtown" will be created. That includes a new main hospital just two blocks away from the current building, and an upgraded Eye and Ear Infirmary. 

The main building will hold just 70 inpatient beds, compared to the current building's 825. 

Neighborhood residents say they are wary about the changes, but the network's president says the new plan contains more services than what's currently available. 

"We don't know enough information, so we're here to get more information for the community," said one person who attended the meeting.

"So people will say, you know, 'Can I still see my doctor?' Of course," said Jeremy Boal, president of Mount Sinai Downtown. "When it's all said and done, we're going to have even more doctors in the Downtown community than we have now, and right now, we have about 600 physicians in the Mount Sinai system that are below 34th Street, vast ambulatory services."

Construction on the main building is slated to start by 2018 and be completed by 2020.