This hospital is going to cost someone an arm and a leg!
Fort Greene’s shabby looking Brooklyn Hospital Center is cashing in on its desirable park-front location by selling off part of the complex to pay for a facelift, according to a hospital honcho.
“We’re hoping for top dollar because we know the market is prime,” said Joan Clark, the hospital’s senior vice president of strategic planning. “Downtown Brooklyn is red hot.”
The Fort Greene Park-adjacent medical center has put its 21-story tower at Willoughby and St. Edwards streets on the market, and will close the application process next month.
The winning developer will be able to replace the structure — a 1940s brick building housing an urgent care facility and doctors’ offices — with an even taller new apartment or condo tower, as the land is already zoned for residential buildings and comes with extra air rights from the main campus, Clark said.
The new owner will also be able to build an exclusive private entrance to the park, according to promotional material from the broker.
The hospital will use the funds from the sale to perform some cosmetic surgery — it will buy new equipment, perform some renovations, and build a new, more modern ambulatory care center, Clark said.
The medical complex currently has a D rating from healthcare watchdog Hospital Safety Score and reported above average levels of some dangerous infections in recent years, but Clark claims it is the dowdy digs really driving potential patients away.
“We give great quality care but because some of our facilities are dated, people don’t always get that impression,” she said.
And neighbors should be happy to see the new housing high-rise there too, Clark said, because it will look much swankier than the existing building.
“This is going to be a beautiful building that the community will like more than the current structure,” she said.
Construction is still a ways off, though — the hospital will lease the building back from the buyer for two to three years while it does construction.
