COBBLE HILL — NYU Langone’s new Cobble Hill health care center that will replace the embattled Long Island College Hospital is slated to begin construction this fall, officials said.
The new 160,000-square-foot building will hold a freestanding emergency department, a multi-specialty clinic, outpatient services and a cancer center, officials told Community Board 6’s youth, human services and education committee Wednesday night.
Construction on the building is expected to finish in 2018, and NYU-Langone will invest $180 million in the project over the next four years, said Gary Kalkut, a senior vice president at NYU Langone. The team also showed CB6 a rendering of the building's tentative layout during the presentation.
After more than a year of protests and rallies, Long Island College Hospital was sold last fall to Fortis Property Group, which had proposed a $240 million redevelopment of the site with luxury condos and the NYU Langone-run medical facility.
“We’re expecting the developer to demolish the building right there on the corner [of Atlantic Avenue and Hicks Street],” Joe Lhota, NYU Langone’s chief of staff, told Community Board 6’s committee Thursday night.
As soon as that building is knocked down and handed back to NYU Langone, they will start the project, Lhota said.
The new building will have an ambulance driveway on Hicks Street and two entrances on Atlantic Avenue for the emergency department and the health care center.
Since Oct. 31, NYU Langone has operated the emergency room in a former LICH building on Amity Street between Hicks and Henry Streets.
The 24-hour “freestanding” ER is one that has all the capabilities of a regular emergency department, “but without a hospital around it,” explained Robert Femia, vice chair of clinical operations.
Officials added that there will be no lapse in emergency services during the construction period.
The ER currently sees 45 to 50 patients a day, of which five or six need to be transferred and admitted into a hospital — either to one of the patient’s choice or NYU Langone’s affiliate, Lutheran Hospital, Femia explained.
However, the ER is only able to receive “Basic Life Support” ambulances while it waits on the state Department of Health to determine whether it can also receive “Advanced Life Support” ambulances for critical adult and pediatric patients, Femia said.
The team also maintained that it would keep in touch with the community through recurrent meetings during the design and construction period.
“We’re here to stay,” Kalkut said.
