CROWN HEIGHTS — A New York-based healthcare group hopes to turn the former St. Mary’s Hospital building in Crown Heights into a new nursing home, according to a plan for the Buffalo Avenue site submitted to the local community board last week.
Centers Health Care plans to renovate the 170,000-square-foot hospital complex at 170 Buffalo Ave. between St. Marks Avenue and Prospect Place into a 281-bed nursing home, according to CHC representative Eric Palatnik.
The healthcare group — which runs 25 facilities in the New York area, nine of them in the five boroughs — bought the property last year for $19.5 million through Buffalo Ave. Realty Associates, LLC, property records show. Palatnik said the interior of the building has been demolished to make way for the “adaptive re-use,” he said, which will take about eight months to construct once it’s approved.
“Everyone is anxious to see the building turn into something. It’s been a building that takes up three-quarters of a city block and it’s been sitting derelict,” he said.
St. Mary’s Hospital closed in 2005 after filing for bankruptcy, according to Brownstoner, which first reported details of the CNC plan.
Palatnik said the nursing home will employ 150 people full-time once it's up and running.
Architect John W. Baumgarten designed the renovation of the building, shown in renderings presented to Community Board 8 at a committee meeting last Thursday. The firm also designed the nearby Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation on Classon Avenue.
Though CNC requested a letter of support from CB8, approval for the project must ultimately come from the Department of City Planning and the Board of Standards and Appeals before it moves forward. It’s unclear exactly how long that process could take, Palatnik said, but expects work on the building may begin in late 2015 or early 2016.
