By Harold Egeln
Brooklyn Daily Eagle

BAY RIDGE — Southwest Brooklyn residents who were prepared to mourn for Victory Memorial Hospital now must get used to yet another development in the hospital’s convoluted history, although this new development is a welcome one.

The old saying, “as one door closes, another door opens,� rings true for this bustling Southwest Brooklyn community, which bid what most people thought was a bitter adieu to its only private hospital on June 30.

But as local residents who have passed the hospital by in the past few days already know, when June 30 — the deadline the state set for Victory to shut down — yielded to July 1, the bankrupt hospital was immediately resuscitated into new life as “SUNY Downstate at Bay Ridge.�

Through a last-minute backroom deal after weeks of behind-the-scenes negotiations, SUNY (State University of New York) Downstate stepped in, continuing Victory’s non-emergency walk-in urgent care center. Victory is still operating its own ambulatory surgery unit until mid-July. That is when SUNY Downstate is expected to receive its official certification from the state Department of Health, said SUNY Downstate spokesman Ronald Najman.

“We are now providing services at the urgent care center,� said Najman. The center has been serving walk-in patients with non-life-threatening ailments and injuries since May. Now, a SUNY Downstate at Bay Ridge sign is replacing the Victory Memorial Hospital sign.

The urgent care (URGY) center, Najman explained, is for patients who cannot get to their physician immediately or who do not have one. An ambulance stationed at the center will rush patients with severe injuries or symptoms, such as a heart attack or stroke, to a nearby hospital ER.

Those closest would be Lutheran Medical Center in Sunset Park, Maimonides Medical Center in Borough Park, and Coney Island Hospital, all already with great demands on their ERs.

Golden Calls for Full ER Services

“The opening of an URGY Care Center by SUNY Downstate Medical Center at the Victory Memorial Hospital site will help to respond to some of the health care needs of the community,� said state Sen. Marty Golden. He is one of a trio of elected officials who worked to help the hospital function.

“We still must look to getting an emergency room opened at this location because without one, this community will be under-served and we cannot accept that. I will continue my advocacy efforts and work toward this,� he said.

The property that was the hospital’s site, on 92nd Street at Seventh Avenue, was purchased for $44.9 million by the Abe Lessor Group, a real estate firm based in Borough Park, in May after approval by a federal bankruptcy court judge. Victory, within a matter of three years, sank into a $92 million-plus debt, allegedly because of poor management and administration.

SUNY Downstate at Bay Ridge, as the new medical entity, will rent the facility from the Lessor Group and retain several of Victory’s employees, said Najman.

Victory’s board of trustees will stay in place for the immediate future, said board member Jerry Kassar, even though Victory’s operating certification license from the state has expired.

Top Officials Hail SUNY Downstate

Congressman Vito Fossella and Councilman Vincent Gentile joined Golden in hailing the SUNY Downstate takeover and called for developing full emergency room services. They had long advocated a SUNY intervention, citing Downstate’s successful track record at its main facility in East Flatbush. SUNY Downstate Medical Center, at 450 Clarkson Ave., has origins dating back to 1860 and has expanded into an academic medical center serving 2.3 million people and employing more than 4,800. It has five satellite clinics, 75 community outreach programs and a range of services.

Victory was founded in 1900, when Bay Ridge was still very much a rural Brooklyn suburb with farms, trolley lines, seaside hotels and mansions. The axe fell on it in December 2006, when the New York State Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century, also known as the Berger Commission, recommended its closing based on its huge debt.

The month before Victory, accumulating a $92 million debt in only a few years, filed for Chapter 11 in bankruptcy court, setting in motion a drive by community groups, civic leaders and elected officials to save the hospital.

Golden, Gentile and Fossella used the power of the courts, law and public opinion to galvanize a grassroots movement that included demonstrations, press conferences, petition and letter-writing campaigns.

A state law passed and signed by then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer in January 2007, acting on the Berger Commission’s recommendation, mandated that the state Department of Health close the hospital by the end of January 2008. This deadline was extended to June 30 under pressure from the lawmakers.

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