[NYguy]

This could very well end up with no operating hospital on site...


http://www.brooklyneagle.com/article...4-04-30-204400

Storm swirls around LICH bidder in Brooklyn, days before May 5 deadline





By Mary Frost

The group negotiating to take over Brooklyn’s embattled Long Island College Hospital (LICH) from the State University of New York may have won the bidding war, but now they find themselves embroiled in a war of public perception.

If negotiations with SUNY are successful, on May 5 Brooklyn Health Partners (BHP), a California-based group, will plunk down a non-refundable $25 million deposit and move on to the next stage of approvals necessary to operate a hospital at the LICH site.

But an onslaught of negative articles about BHP’s viability and alleged plans to build 50-story towers, skepticism about SUNY’s bidding process, and an expression of doubt from none other than Mayor Bill de Blasio has BHP’s partners shaking their heads.

.....BHP spokesperson Donnette Dunbar said the group was taken aback by the criticism, since good faith negotiations are ongoing.

“Brooklyn Health Partners is surprised that the mayor has taken that position seeing he has not been a part of our negotiations with the State University of New York,” she told the Eagle.

“On May 5, BHP will make a $25 million non-refundable payment and show it has the financial means to complete the entire project,” she said. “We would hope that the mayor and other stakeholders would judge BHP, not on unsubstantiated rumors, but on its performance.”

http://www.brooklyneagle.com/article...l-bidders-lich

Mayor de Blasio on Tuesday afternoon lobbed a bomb onto the ongoing negotiations over the ownership of Long Island College Hospital (LICH) in Brooklyn.

“Our mission is to save and protect continuous, high-level health care at Long Island College Hospital, and this is the heart of the agreement made between SUNY and the community earlier this year,” Mayor de Blasio said in a statement.

“To make good on this promise, those proposals that are unable to deliver health care at LICH should be bypassed, and those that can must be engaged,” he said. “I urge SUNY to open a new dialogue with additional bidders, so health care can be saved at this facility for tens of thousands of New Yorkers.”

SUNY declined to comment on the Mayor's comment.

De Blasio said his call comes on the heels of reports that the proposal from BHP will "likely not meet the requirements of a settlement" struck earlier this year among SUNY, a coalition of community advocates and activists, and elected officials, including the Mayor.

BHP was faced with an onslaught of negative articles this past week about their viability and about their alleged plans to build 50-story towers at the Cobble Hill site. The plans were supplied to reporters by one of the losing bidders, Derek Oubre, president of Trindade Value Partners -- a former BHP partner who is now considering legal action against the group.

.....BHP spokesperson Donnette Dunbar told the Brooklyn Eagle after the Mayor’s earlier comment on Monday that BHP was “surprised that the mayor has taken that position seeing he has not been a part of our negotiations with the State University of New York.”

She expressed confidence that BHP would be able to make a $25 million nonrefundable deposit on May 5, and prove that it has the financial means to complete the entire project.

.....LICH was nearly shuttered last summer, until a coalition of community activists, unions and elected leaders, including then-Public Advocate Bill de Blasio, launched a series of protests and legal actions to prevent a closure. De Blasio played a major role in keeping LICH open, even getting arrested in a protest.

Mayor de Blasio said that closing LICH would deny care to approximately 75,000 people in Brooklyn who rely on the hospital as their primary neighborhood source of health care.

Stay tuned, this is getting good.