Greenpoint Hospital Will Get 500 Affordable Units, Mayor Promises

WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN — The City will develop affordable housing on the long-abandoned Greenpoint Hospital site, Mayor Bill de Blasio promised Wednesday night.

The mayor has announced the City would bring 500 affordable apartments to the lot at 288 Jackson Street, areas of which neighbors complain have drawn squatters and have stood vacant for more than 30 years.

“That site went into limbo in 1983 and it’s still that way today,” said de Blasio in a town hall meeting in Williamsburg Wednesday night. “It makes no sense at all.”

“I’m here to make a formal announcement that we will be moving forward and plan to create a 500 affordable apartments and supportive housing apartments on the Greenpoint Hospital Site.”

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The former Greenpoint Hospital nurses’ quarters are currently home to a 200-bed shelter, a health clinic and a Department of Homelessness Services laundry, a vacant building and a sewer easement.

The City’s Housing Preservation and Development agency announced Thursday it will seek proposals to redevelop the site into a housing complex with 100 percent affordable housing units, a new shelter and clinic.

Development plans for the 146,100-square-foot lot have faced numerous challenges, more recently in 2012 when the developer Mayor Michael Bloomberg chose to take on the project was charged with bribery.

Mayor Bill de Blasio also promised to bring affordable housing to the old hospital site when he first came into office and organized a series of community outreach workshops to brainstorm redevelopment ideas. But the project was stalled, literally, by dirty laundry.

Developers could not begin until the Department of Homeless Services found another place to keep its laundry facility, the Brooklyn Paper reported in February, 2016.

Developers interested in tackling the project are invited to a conference on Sept. 15 to proposals, which will be due by Dec. 7.

Photo courtesy of GoogleMaps/Aug. 2014