Thursday, December 29, 2011

Easier said than done


From the NY Post:

The city’s hospital system has promised to empty Goldwater Hospital on Roosevelt Island within two years to make way for the new graduate engineering campus envisioned by Mayor Bloomberg — and now it’s scrambling to find places for more than 500 long-term patients.

The race against the clock began when Cornell University and the Technion Israel Institute of Technology were selected last week as the winners of a worldwide competition to build a $2 billion applied-sciences school on Roosevelt Island, heralded by the mayor as a “game changer” intended to make New York a worthy competitor to Silicon Valley.

Cornell immediately announced that it intends to open the first phase of its 11-acre facility, encompassing 300,000 square feet, in 2017.

But that schedule is dependent on Goldwater being emptied by the end of 2013, an aggressive plan that would also allow the mayor to stage a ceremony heralding its demolition before he leaves office. Cornell hopes to start construction in 2015.

Officials of the Health and Hospitals Corp. insist they’ll meet the tight deadline.

One person involved in the process said that would require a herculean effort.

“It seems unlikely,” said the source. “At the least, this is a really ambitious target date given how far they’ve gotten so far.”

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do what other hospitals attached to Queens have done,, simply shut down.

If the above does not work I am sure Bloomberg will put the patients on a barge on the East River and cut the ropes!

Anonymous said...

I worked there for 10 years and I can tell you the physical plant and structural conditions of Goldwater Hospital are in very bad shape.
It was time to replace it after years of poor maintenance. In other words it was run into the ground by poor management. The best part of the hospital was it's well trained nursing staff and it's dedicated Civil Service workers who worked in very unique settings.
I'll never forget working there and doing my job for all the patients who needed Goldwater to live their lives.

Anonymous said...

I have been reading about the secret negotiations that got this Israeli university a plum deal on Roosevelt Island. It stinks to high heaven, not like any pol will commit political suicide investigating it.