The seniors facing eviction from their tony Grand Army Plaza nursing home got a brief reprieve on Friday when a judge ordered management to keep the place open, for now.
Prospect Park Residence, which occupies a nine-story building at 1 Prospect Park West and was slated to close on Friday, will stay open until a lawsuit by angry family members challenging its closure is settled, a judge ruled. The judge also ordered the assisted-living facility to reinstate its night nurse, allow private aids back into the facility, and provide all the services it had committed to before it started transferring elderly residents out. A lawyer for the families said they are happy with the momentary freeze, but complained that the closure process has been flawed from the get-go, when the Department of Health signed off on the shuttering plan without any push-back.
“We had serious concerns about the closure plan that was rubber-stamped by the DOH,” said Aurore DeCarlo, an attorney with the Legal Aid Society’s Brooklyn Office for the Aging. “It seemed like a really skeletal version of what it should look like.”
In March Prospect Park Residence bigs gave its elderly wards just three months to scram, saying increased taxes had struck the facility a fatal financial blow. But the suit charges the operators and the building owner did not do enough to prepare for transferring the vulnerable oldsters and that the Department of Health should not have signed off on the plan.
The old folks’ home is in a prime spot across President Street from 9 Prospect Park West, where actor Chloe Sevigny bought a pad for $2 million in December and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-New York) lives with his wife City University of New York vice chancellor Iris Weinshall.
