‘That’s A Fact': Long Island College Hospital Is Closing

By on February 6, 2013 10:18 am in Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, News, Real Estate

Doctors at the financially ailing Long Island College Hospital in Cobble Hill have been informed that the medical facility is closing, with no room for debate. According to Dr. John Romonelli, past president of the LICH medical staff, on Monday night, SUNY Downstate Medical Center’s current president, Dr. John Williams, “came in and announced the closure of LICH. That’s a fact,” he told the New York Post.

In a closed door meeting, Williams said it is necessary to sacrifice the 155-year-old LICH at 339 Hicks Street to save the rest of the enterprise: “The last thing I want to do is have people lose their jobs, but LICH could bring down SUNY Downstate and that’s something I’m trying to prevent.” LICH has only a 50% occupancy rate of its hospital beds, say officials at SUNY, which owns LICH.

Earlier Monday, the Brooklyn Eagle’s Mary Frost reported that the SUNY board of trustees would hold a brief public hearing on LICH Thursday afternoon, before deciding LICH’s fate in a vote early Friday morning.

Word is that the property could be sold and converted into luxury housing.

Twitter discussion ongoing…

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  • BrooklynBugle

    All your comments are displaying and were never placed in moderation or spam by the system. Have a great day!

  • MonroeOrange

    MedicMike…if you look at past threads the majority of us in ‘Brownstone Brooklyn’ are very concerned about losing this emergency room. Except for Gerry, whom never has an emergency and has a special waiting area in Manhasset, where his wife and Au Pair give birth to his children.

  • MedicMike

    MonroeO— I’m glad to know. While jobs are on the line, including mine, what’s most important is that once a hospital is gone it’s gone. We as a community and boro will only lose if the Governor and Brooklyn let Downstate get away with mismanaging all of Downstate including LICH. LICH is being used as a scape goat for a bigger problem at Downstate which will not go away even if they get top dollar for the property that LICH occupies. The stupidity of closing LICH is evidennt when you consider that the hospital at Downstate’s Flatbush Campus is right across the street from KIng’s County.. which despite it’s past rep is not a bad hospital. What is crazier is that both hospitals are 911 receiving hospitals 3 blocks away from each other ….. I think you can draw the conclusion.

  • Wiley E.

    So Gerry, you suggest one calls a car service instead of an ambulance to get to a hospital? Have another Hot Dog.

  • Knight

    “One” still hopes that, but what about the rest of us? ;-)

  • C.

    No it’s not. Look at all the successful bars and restaurants directly across the street.

  • Gerry

    The Brooklyn demographics send people with means elsewhere a CIGNA PPO does not want to share a room with a Medicaid patient and so, the go to Manhattan or Manhasset, or Garden City, pr up north to Greenwich, CT area. Emergency medicine is one thing. Maternity, knee surgery, etc., etc. are another. So many people in Brooklyn Heights avoid LICH as much as they can. And do not shoot the messenger.

  • Gerry

    Hey Willey,

    What I said is that a person could take a car service OR call an ambulance and be billed for it by NYC. How could you miss that? Do you work at being dumb or does that come naturally to you? Get with the program Wiley. Wake up and smell the coffee Wiley. I SAID THAT A SICK PERSON COULD TAKE A CAR SERVICE OR CALL AN AMBULANCE. Good thing for you being dumb is not illegal.

  • Gerry

    Heck NO your comments are valuable and I thank you for your attention.

  • Gerry

    Your comment is up on top of the scroll.

  • Gerry

    I leave Brooklyn Heights early 445am and ride our bridges and highways at a pefect hour with NO traffic. I am out of Brooklyn Heights through DUMBO down the BQE and over the Kosciusco Bridge in just 16 minutes. I know my way around traffic in the NYC. I forget being stuck in bridge in traffic hardly ever happens to me. We have no plans to be in need of an emergency room at any time in the future. We are educated, healthy people who are fully insured. The odds are better that we will not be sick and will have no need of any hospital ever and thats a fact. And so, I am not going to worry about something that is probably never going to happen.

  • Rick

    I have a question for all the people on the Brooklyn Heights Blog:

    Do you think that Gerry actually believes the statements he makes?

    The one above is a good example, but there are so many more displaying a similar lack of sense on other threads. My girlfriend just thinks he’s a troll.

  • David on Middagh

    There really ought to be a way to sort chronologically by *comments* and not just *conversations*. Computers can do this. I have programmed them. I just know they can. I don’t know what Disqus’ problem is.

  • David on Middagh

    Rick, I believe someone can be sincere and trollish simultaneously, and that what we sometimes see on this board are people who take words very literally responding with absolute candor, perhaps as reflex, maybe also in the hope of finding likeminded people. There certainly has been goading back and forth.

  • TeddyNYC

    I assume that also includes the dentist dept. run by Lutheran. Can anyone recommend a dentist where I can get a cleaning close to the $65 that I pay at LICH now?

  • Wiley E.

    Gerry, take a swim in the hot dog water.

  • GHB

    I think that, in reality, he lives in his mother’s basement near Clark and Monroe. You know… that crappy, dumpy neighborhood.

  • Joe A

    I have come to believe that “Gerry” could not be anyone’s real persona. How could anyone be as consistently obnoxiouß with every utterance if it wasn’t contrived. If he was real would not family and friends have held an intervention?

    But if this “Gerry” is indeed real he has some very significant psychological problems. The consistent bragging. Bragging about how smart he is, how rich he is, how happy he is, how beautiful his wife is, how great his street is, how great his brownstone is, yada, yada, yada. On and on, over and over. People that have to convince themseles how happy they are in every sentence are usually very sad and lonely creatures.

    So, if it is a fake persona that he is created, well done. You ave manged to create troll like a champ. If it is not fake, well then I truly feel sorry for him.

  • Gerry

    New York Hospital Queens has a dental school they take no insurance. This facility is well run and the rates are very low. I took our employee here and they did a great job on her teeth.

  • Gerry

    ALL of the men think that your girlfriend is a troll.

  • Gerry

    Most people around here have no car. We have 3 of them 2 are hardly used I keep them parked at LICH garage.

  • Gerry

    Ye, it is. Montero owns its building. The others are dependent on LICH. It is a tough spot to be in business more fail than dont.

  • Gerry

    Emergency Rooms make no money it is about being admitted to a hospital through an ER and having comprehensive health care benefits thats how hospitals make a profit. If a person with insurance does land at LICH ER good chances are that they will leave go to another hospital to be fixed and then LICH gets no money.

  • Gerry

    The reason LICH closed the wards is because people with health insurance were NOT using LICH so they closed the wards they had to the place was bleeding cash.

  • Gerry

    AT North Shore/LIJ Maternity Ward it is family members only it had been ME in the delivery room and not our au pair. Our au pair was at home with my in laws tending to my children. They have a VERY sweet sibling visiting hour I got a few great pics of the kids with the new baby brother. We were treated very well at NSLIJ could not ask for better care. We love our new baby so much!

  • Gerry

    LICH did this to LICH if LICH had been so great the people would have gone to LICH.

  • Gerry

    I dont think anyone laughed at your dumb joke? I swim at Hofstra University Swim Center 6am to 7am M – F and Asphalt Green on Saturday afternoons.

  • C.

    You’re flat out wrong. All the bars and restaurants are not targeted at hospital workers or visitors at all. I’ve never seen any hospital workers in any of those places. And many of those businesses have been there for years.

  • Gerry

    This is a very difficult place to make a go of a small business – i have seen many fold over the years. Small business can not make it on Montague Street unless you are Verizon or the like it is a For Rent sign. On Atlantic Ave the rents are hight, foot traffic mimimal and Atlantic Ave is a hard spot to do business. If you feel otherwise thats OK with me best wishes and have a nice day.

  • ltap917

    Gerry,
    Get over yourself.

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