$12M Conversion for Crown Heights Hospital
The abandoned hospital building 151 Rochester Avenue between Prospect and St. Marks is getting a huge makeover. $12 million will be spent on the overhaul, which will include a new entrance, windows, floors, plumbing and electricity. The building will also be greened, with the addition of solar panels, a roof terrace and expansive landscaping. What…
The abandoned hospital building 151 Rochester Avenue between Prospect and St. Marks is getting a huge makeover. $12 million will be spent on the overhaul, which will include a new entrance, windows, floors, plumbing and electricity. The building will also be greened, with the addition of solar panels, a roof terrace and expansive landscaping. What for? The organization Concern for Independent Living is creating 65 affordable studio units provided specifically to recovering psychiatric and disabled individuals. The development will not provide hospital services but will provide supportive services. Not everyone’s thrilled with the idea though: According to the minutes of a recent Community Board 8 meeting, a member was concerned about the “type of individuals that would be housed in the facility and the fact that there will not be, in her opinion, sufficient supportive staff on hand.” On the other hand, an attractive, activated site certainly has big benefits for the neighborhood.
As long as your friend isn’t surrounded by recovering addicts and mentally-disturbed individuals, grand_army, that’s fine. But right near where your friend lives, on Clarkson Ave., is a notorious Salvation Army shelter specializing in the homeless MICA population (mentally ill, chemical abusing). It’s a regular feature of the 71st precinct crime reports (I know from attending Community Council meetings) and yet the City doesn’t count it in its tallies of this sort of facility, because it doesn’t receive direct City agency funding. I’m all for affordable housing, particularly for the elderly, but the preponderance of supportive/transitional units in my and surrounding neighborhoods is a concern.
If there was more housing in the city like this we might have many, many fewer folks living on the street. I have an elderly friend who lives in sheltered housing near King County Hospital in So. Crown Heights. His apt is tiny but it’s safe and affordable and he loves it. It’s not warehousing — it’s a real home.
What Babs said.
babs, I don’t disagree with most of your observations regarding statistical methodology.
g_man, that depends – how many other people live around you in 300 sq. ft. studios? And are you all mentally ill, drug abusers, or former prison inmates (or all three)? And the problem with how these facilities are counted is what enables City officials to deny these charges – they don’t count all such facilities, regardless of their funding source, so the City doesn’t officially “recognize” all the facilities in a particular neighborhood. Similar incongruities relating to waste and transportation facilities were recently corrected via the approval of amendments to the City Charter proposed in the last elections – supportive/transitional housing facilities, however, were deleted from this proposal. Wonder why?
Hmmm, if I remember my own analysis, CB8 does have the most community facilities in Brooklyn, and by a good margin, but not six times … was it CB2 or CB3? Over-saturation is exactly that, but fwiw my colleagues in government love to seize on factual errors when dismissing community concerns.
My apartment is not much bigger. Does the fact that I am paying market-rate rent and not receiving the much needed psychiatric care mean I am not being “warehoused?”
What Babs said. Since this part of town is not exactly on the radar for most people, it could have easily been torn down and few would have noticed, or cared. Most old hospital buildings and schools are extremely well built, and can easily be adapted for housing.
While I am glad that the building will be reused for housing, I can certainly see why a community resident has concerns. CB8, which covers most of Crown Heights, has more social service facilities than any other part of any borough in the city, last count, before this one was proposed, over 6 times more facililies than any other section of town. No one is trying to boot out those in need here, and as babs said, if it’s run right, more power to ’em. But come on, let’s put some of this stuff elsewhere. Barron is right on this issue.
It’s wonderful that they are revitalizing and improving this site, rather than demolishing it and applying for “community facility” zoning exemptions allowing construction of out-of-scale buildings in residential neighborhoods, as has recently been the case, notably by organizations such as Community Access and Providence House (in Bed-Stuy and PLG). The warehousing of individuals in 300-sq. ft. studio apartments, combined with the overloading of these types of facilities in CDs 8 and 9, remains a concern, and has been signalled and spoken out against by Councilmember Charles Barron, among others.
However, it seems that here the Concern for Independent Living has been actively reaching out to the surrounding community and encouraging involvement, again, quite unlike the approach taken by other organizations. I wish them and the surrounding community well.
Didn’t Bruce Ratner buy the former St. Mary’s site? Or did that not happen?