SEE: Long-Vacant Crown Heights Hospital Becomes New Nursing Home

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — A long-vacant hospital building on Buffalo Avenue officially opened as a nursing home this week, 14 years after the hospital closed its doors.

The new 280,000-square-foot nursing home brings a facility once in Midwood to the 170 Buffalo Ave. building, more than doubling the space for its nearly 300 residents, the nursing home announced. It replaces St. Mary's Hospital, which shuttered in 2005 after filing for bankruptcy.

Hundreds of people joined the new facility, named Brooklyn Center, for its grand opening on Thursday.

The new location will mean Brooklyn Center can increase the residents it serves from 215 to 281 and bring in a variety of new amenities, a spokesperson for the home said.

The amenities will include a 6,000-square-foot rehab therapy suite, 24/7 nursing services, full-time physician services, oversized bathrooms, computer lounges, outdoor space and a Southeast Asian themed unit with staff fluent in Chinese, Arabic, Urdu and Bengali.

The new location will open to families in about eight weeks, the spokesperson said.

Centers Health Care, which runs the Brooklyn Center, first bought the hospital building in 2014 for $19.5 million, according to Brownstoner. The group was approved to turn the hospital into a nursing home in 2016.

Brownstoner noted that the new facility will help fill a need in Brooklyn for more nursing homes and assisted living facilities.

An assisted living facility in Park Slope closed in 2014 and the Oxford Nursing Home in Fort Greene filed a certificate-of-need application to move their services to East New York.

Check out some photos of the new Crown Heights facility, provided by Brooklyn Center: