The City's Newest Endangered Species: Hospitals

As real estate values keep getting crazier, New York City’s list of endangered species keeps getting longer. Grocery stores, gas stations, mom & pops and affordable apartments have long been headed the way of the dodo – usually to make way for yet another luxury condo building. Now we can add hospitals to the list of endangered species.

In a major blow to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s vow to provide the city with more affordable housing units, Fortis Property Group has announced that it will not turn the Long Island College Hospital site in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, into more than 200 units of affordable housing, as de Blasio had hoped. Instead, the company will build – you guessed it – a luxury condo tower, the New York Post reports.

“Based on the high demand for community facility space at this premier location, timing and other development factors, an as-of-right redevelopment is the most profitable,” said Fortis president Joel Kestenbaum.

De Blasio isn’t the only New Yorker who’s dismayed. Longtime neighborhood activist Roy Sloane responded: “I consider this a catastrophe for the Cobble Hill Historic District.