Long Island College Hospital staffers have been told that their ailing Brooklyn facility will close — and there’s already talk that the property could be sold and converted into luxury housing, sources said today.
Dr. John Williams, president of SUNY Downstate Medical Center, which owns LICH, informed LICH doctors that he’s pulling the plug on the 155-year-old Cobble Hill hospital during a closed-door meeting last night.
“[Williams] came in and announced the closure of LICH. That’s a fact,” said Dr. John Romonelli, past president of the LICH medical staff.
Barring a miracle, the loss of LICH would be a blow to brownstone Brooklyn.
It offers the only hospital emergency room in the Brooklyn Heights/ Cobble Hill vicinity.
The SUNY Board of Trustees executive committee is expected to vote on the closure plan Friday morning, after a public hearing Thursday, said SUNY Downstate spokesman Robert Bellafiore.
If the board votes yes, Williams will send the LICH closure plan to the state Health Department for approval. The review could take at least several weeks.
Layoff notices would only go out if — and only after — the Health Department OKs the closure plan, Bellafiore said.
It’s a startling turnaround.
SUNY Downstate acquired the cash-starved LICH two years ago to save it.
But a scathing audit issued by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli last month discovered that SUNY Downstate was virtually broke and concluded its purchase of LICH was a colossal mistake — a marriage of two financially ailing hospitals.
LICH has only a 50 percent occupancy rate of its hospital beds, SUNY officials said.