SUNY board officially approves sale of Long Island College Hospital to Fortis
The end of historic LICH in Brooklyn; Cobble Hill development to come
After more than a year of community protests and litigation, trustees for the State University of New York (SUNY) voted to approve the sale of Brooklyn’s Long Island College Hospital (LICH) to developer Fortis Property Group.
SUNY’s board of trustees expressed the hopeful belief that the resolution’s approval represented an end to their admittedly bungled stewardship of the Cobble Hill hospital.
“Let me say it’s a great moment and a time of relief,” chairman H. Carl McCall told the board after their vote approving the resolution. “It’s been a long, arduous and damaging process . . . However, it is now behind us.”
The relief was not entirely evident in Brooklyn, however. Attorney Jim Walden (Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher), who has been representing local community groups, doctors and the Public Advocate in fighting the sale, said on Wednesday, “Any damage to SUNY has been in the nature of a self-inflicted wound, or rather a long series of them. And, I doubt this is over. Some of SUNY’s so-called caretakers may have succeeded in killing this community’s hospital, but the long trail of evidence they left will come back to haunt them. Of that, you can be sure.”