Brooklyn Hospital wants to buy Long Island College Hospital.
The Fort Greene hospital’s proposal would re-purpose the existing buildings of Cobble Hill’s Long Island College Hospital, turning some into housing and a portion into a medical center featuring ambulatory care, an emergency department, and other specialized departments, a Brooklyn Hospital Center executive said.
“This was a more recent development based upon our analysis of community need and the best use of the facilities as we see it,” said Joan Clark, vice president of strategic planning.
The plan comes a month after the State University of New York, which runs Long Island College Hospital and spent 2013 trying to shutter it, offered to hand the keys over to the city rather than considering a competing bid to redevelop it. Brooklyn Hospital’s proposal does not include in-patient services, but Clark said that it may have better luck winning over Long Island College Hospital’s staffers than competing pitches.
“Part of this proposal is to engage the unions,” Clark said, adding that the Brooklyn Hospital plan would save some of the 1,442 jobs that would be lost if the Cobble Hill medical center closed altogether. Clark could not give a number of the jobs that the new medical center would retain or say where the apartment buildings would be located.
Long Island College Hospital activists and unions did not return requests for comment, but the New York State Nurses Association has long said that it would not accept an overhaul for the troubled 156-year-old Cobble Hill institution that included anything less than a full service hospital.
The State University of New York would not comment on the latest bid.
“SUNY is engaged in a procurement process and it is not concluded at this time therefore we cannot make comments on specific proposals,” said spokesman David Doyle.
