LICH Sales: Real Estate Roguery, or Cure for What Ails?
Doctors who work at Long Island College Hospital held a rally yesterday to blast LICH parent company Continuum Health Partners’ practice of selling off some of the hospital’s real estate holdings, according to articles in the Times and Daily News. Some LICH staff believe the hospital will eventually be shuttered, and that Continuum is using…
Doctors who work at Long Island College Hospital held a rally yesterday to blast LICH parent company Continuum Health Partners’ practice of selling off some of the hospital’s real estate holdings, according to articles in the Times and Daily News. Some LICH staff believe the hospital will eventually be shuttered, and that Continuum is using proceeds from the sale of LICH holdings to fund operations at tonier hospitals in Manhattan, especially Beth Israel Medical Center. In the past year, Continuum sold off $33.4 million worth of LICH properties to developers, including Cobble Hill’s Lamm Building at 110 Amity Street (above left) and Carroll Gardens’ International Longshoremen’s building at 340 Court Street (above right, pre-demolition). Continuum’s president, Stanley Brezenoff, told the Times that all the money gained from the sale of LICH’s real estate holdings goes back to aiding the financially troubled institution. Every dime out of those transactions goes back into L.I.C.H., says Brezenoff. They have a deficit. They have major cash flow problems. We do the liquidation of assets in order to give them money to operate.
Doctors Say Hospital Is Falling Victim to Its Own Real Estate Value [NY Times]
Doctors Fear Brooklyn Hospital to Shut [NY Daily News]
The ILA building was sold and is currently being demolished. Now the project was done (as usual) without asking the community at large. The problem is that not only is a building exceding 10 stories being built, but the developers are crooked people.
Evidence:
It is typical in buildings as old as the ILA that there is asbestos used as an insulator in the walls and celings of the building. The fiber was a common insulator in the early to mid-1900s (the time this building was built). Now asbestos fibers have been proven to cause major health problems and affect your lungs if ingested. People complained to the city about this problem because they were sending asbestos particles into the air of a residental area. People waited but nothing was done, until about a couple weeks after the building was completely dismantled. The city decided then (having left enough time for the asbestos particles to carry throughout the Court Street area and beyond) to test the air above the building. To no ones suprise there were “no asbestos particles found.” Of course there would be no asbestos found after it thinned out and spread out!!! Now here’s the kicker, if there was no asbestos particles found explain why late in the evening (past midnight) there were people decked out in white full body coverings and gas masks carrying black garbage bags by the dozen and leaving the building premisise for several nights. Now I don’t believe that this was bring your asbestos suit to work day… do you?
P.S.
When developers want to build a large property in an area like Carroll Gardens or Cobble Hill, they overshoot the height and number of stories. That way when the government kicks it down by five or six they had what they wanted in the first place.
You’re right about business services in Brooklyn sucking. Can’t get a decent meal, cup of coffee or even a good slice of pizza in Brooklyn. I usually hold it in till I get to the crapper in Manhattan.
Hey, supply and demand. You wouldn’t want regulation of property values – why intervene on a private entity that is serving it’s purpose, maximizing profits?
You want a quality hospital in your ‘hood? Start one or advocate one. Don’t tell an existing one, a private entity, how to run their business. The hospital business is very tough. Many have cash flow problems. They gotta do what they gotta do. How is this fraud? (excuse me and educate me if I’m ignorant about this matter)
LICH has issues anyway. Security allows unlicensed gypsy cabs (my own experience), a nurse recently mixed up baby mothers (ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE – the wrong breast milk was fed, google it), staff appears to be disorganized and unprofessional, etc. A nurse there said to me “It’s Brooklyn. I’ve never seen anything like it (conduct)”.
Good riddance.
But this is general to Brooklyn. Business services here tend to suck. Manhattan (not all of Manhattan though) is almost always preferred. It just goes to show how ahead of itself gentrification has become. Eventually demand for quality services will be met as it lags this housing boom.
The properties that were sold (Lamm Institute & the former Longshoreman’s Union building on Court) were both seriously dated buildings in need of significant rehab that sat on extremely valuable real estate. Continuum must have made some nice change on them. They would have been only marginally useful to the hospital.
Only the very foolish would wish that a long-established community hospital close.
9:47, if you think LICH sucks, check in to Methodist on 7th Av. They might not even feed you there.
If LICH were to close what does that leave us with – Victory Memorial Hospital in Bay Ridge has just closed. You can wait a few days at Lutheran and Maimonides to get a bed – Does it make any sense to anyone to close hospitals when the population of Brooklyn is always increasing? where will people go for emergency treatment?
This is really too bad, fraud sucks in general, but something tells me that closing the barn doors after all the horses have left (in this case properties sold)wont bring them back and Stan the B has got the goods on many pols.
btw–always good to see the local print papers doing their job
The fact that they are selling off bits of LICH and using the proceeds to fund improvements in Manhattan hospitals says exactly what Continuum sees as the future of healthcare. I guess it ain’t Brooklyn! If a hospital that sits between two of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Brooklyn isn’t seen as worth improving, then we’re screwed! Any opinions–what are the good hospitals in Brooklyn? Any? None?