The good news: The year-long battle over the future of Long Island College Hospital is finally over.
The bad news: The deal reached Sunday is much the same one reached before activists, judges and pols — led by then-candidate Bill de Blasio — made it their mission to prop up a bankrupt and unworkable facility.
SUNY has now agreed to sell the 20-building property to Fortis Property Group for $240 million. Fortis is partnering with NYU-Langone Medical Center and Lutheran Medical Center. In short, it’s the same group SUNY wanted to sell to last year.
The new owners won’t preserve a full-service hospital, as de Blasio, the activists and unions had demanded. But there will be some medical services alongside the luxury and affordable condominiums, including a freestanding ER.
Even the mayor, who was very publicly arrested during the “save LICH” fight, seems to see the light. As a candidate, he blasted the initial SUNY-Fortis deal as “by no means enough to serve the needs of this community.” As mayor, his stance has softened.
So has that of Supreme Court Justice Johnny Lee Baynes, who Friday dismissed the last legal challenge to SUNY’s sale.
Truth is, this fight was never about health care. This was a fight about unions trying to preserve jobs for themselves and politicians trying to make names for themselves.
The combination of a glut of hospital beds in Brooklyn plus the changing nature of health-care delivery meant any full-service hospital was simply unviable.
Too bad it took many months, an unnecessary legal battle and tens of millions of wasted dollars before reality was finally allowed to win out.