There’s a late bid for Long Island College Hospital, which has been barred from closing despite losing millions monthly.
Crain’s New York reports that Brooklyn Hospital Center, as part of a group involving an unnamed private-equity firm and a developer, is offering to buy LICH. Their plan is to turn it into a comprehensive-care center with ambulance service and a 24/7 emergency room for non-critical illnesses.
Inpatient services would be treated at Brooklyn Hospital, a mile away. Other outpatient services would be offered locally.
The question is whether community activists can take yes for an answer. For their demand is that LICH be preserved as a full-service facility, and thus far they have prevailed in court. These activists include Mayor de Blasio, whose vocal stance against allowing the hospital to be shut down helped propel him to the front of the mayoral race.
Officials are reluctant to reveal full details at this point. But there appears to be two critical differences between this bid and the earlier proposal that was tabled because of community opposition.
First, Brooklyn Hospital says it will work with the unions to preserve as many LICH jobs as possible. Second, the hospital’s real-estate holdings would be converted into 1,000 mixed-income rental units, including 350 units of affordable housing. (The earlier proposal was for condos.)
How the activists respond will tell us whether they are open to compromise or intend to insist that LICH continue bankrupting itself, not because that serves the community’s health-care needs but because those lost millions will underwrite one of the mayor’s pet unions.