Hospital-Replacing Nursing Home in Crown Heights Has New Renderings, Finally Moving Forward
Standing across the street from the Weeksville Heritage Center, it was formerly St. Mary’s, a Roman Catholic hospital that closed in 2005 due to bankruptcy.
Long in the works, the conversion of a long-shuttered Crown Heights hospital into a nursing home is moving toward completion.
Located at 170 Buffalo Avenue, it was formerly St. Mary’s, a Roman Catholic hospital that closed in 2005 due to bankruptcy. It stands across the street from the Weeksville Heritage Center.
Centers Health Care, which operates nursing homes, purchased the former hospital for $19.5 million in 2014. Because of the special permit need to change the use of the former hospital to a nursing home in this district, the project entered the city’s ULURP public review process in 2015. The community board approved the project in January 2016, with the City Planning Commission’s approval the following March.
The special permit, according to city records, was then withdrawn. Plans were subsequently filed the same year (they had been announced, but never filed, in 2015), which proposed converting the former hospital into a 281-bed nursing home with 30 parking spots, which would decrease the size of the existing parking lot.
Edward W. Bredow of SBLM is the new architect. The firm is responsible for a number of designs in Brooklyn, including PS 163 in Bath Beach and PS 188 in Coney Island.
Renderings posted on the construction fence outside the building are slightly different than the previous renderings. At the front of the building, there is now an outdoor landing on the second floor with a facade of different shades of grey.
During a recent visit, the facade appeared to be almost complete. The construction fence is still up, and workers were on site. Scaffolding is still up at the front of the building.
There is a need in Brooklyn for more nursing homes and assisted living facilities. In 2014, an assisted living facility at 1 Prospect Park West in Park Slope controversially closed. More recently, the Oxford Nursing Home in Fort Greene filed a certificate-of-need application to move their services to East New York, according to Patch.
In Brooklyn Heights, there is senior housing planned for a former Jehovah’s Witness property at 21 Clark Street, and housing for LGTBQ seniors recently topped out in Fort Greene.
[Photos by Craig Hubert unless noted otherwise]
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