The Parkway Hospital building in Forest Hills will be auctioned off on June 28. Anna Gustafson/The Forum Newsgroup
There are indicators that the large beige building set amidst weeds on 113th Street in Forest Hills once housed a 251-bed hospital, but they, like the blue awning outside what was once the emergency room, are quickly fading.
There are the outlines of the white letters that once spelled out “Parkway Hospital” on the facility that was shuttered by the state in 2008, and it is not hard to remember the ambulances that once screeched to a halt in the entranceway – now marked with large “No Trespassing” signs.
Now, however, instead of ambulances, there are scraggly plants taking refuge in the shade of the entranceway, and the windows that hundreds of patients looked out of are boarded up.
It has become, residents agree, an eyesore – and a constant reminder of a hospital that bred fiscal mismanagement and corruption. Parkway’s former chief executive officer, Dr. Robert Aquino, was sentenced in 2012 for bribing former state Sen. Carl Kruger (D-Brooklyn) to keep his hospital open.
But, civic leaders and elected officials hope that, come June 28, that could begin to change – when the 70,000 square-foot Parkway Hospital building, located at 70-35 113th St., will be auctioned off at the Queens Supreme Court in Jamaica. The building’s buyer must also take on the building’s outstanding lien of $14.86 million.
And while elected officials and civic leaders said they have not been informed as to who the potential buyers could be, they said the zoning, and the building itself, can only lend itself to certain types of facilities – including medical offices or senior housing. It could, of course, become another hospital – which some argue is much needed in a borough where four hospitals have closed over the past five years – Parkway, St. John’s in Elmhurst, Mary Immaculate in Jamaica, and, last year, Peninsula Hospital in Far Rockaway. But, most of those familiar with the situation said it is doubtful another hospital would open its doors there.
“I’d like to see senior housing there, with a doctor or a dentist in the building,” Councilwoman Karen Koslowitz (D-Forest Hills) said. “Another hospital is necessary, but it doesn’t seem like anyone will do it.”
Koslowitz stressed that senior housing “is definitely needed.
“We have a lot of seniors who find it very hard to pay their rent,” she continued. “This would be ideal for some of them to live in a house that’s not far from Queens Boulevard. It gives them a chance to be independent.”
Frank Gulluscio, the district manager of Community Board 6, which covers Forest Hills, too said he would like to see some type of affordable senior housing come into the site.
“It would only be able to be a community type facility, like a hospital or senior housing,” Gulluscio said.
Since the hospital closed in 2008, a number of elected officials have tried to get another hospital to come into the site, including former U.S. Rep. and now mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner, who once represented Forest Hills in Congress. And while a number of elected officials, including Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, have said another hospital – or more – is needed in a borough that often battles overcrowded emergency rooms, Forest Hills Hospital Executive Director Rita Mercieca said her hospital, located a little more than a mile away from Parkway, is no longer battling with the overcrowding it experienced just after St. John’s, Mary Immaculate and Parkway closed.
Forest Hills, like a number of hospitals throughout the borough, received state funds to help them absorb the patients who would have once gone to St. John’s or Mary Immaculate, and Forest Hills Hospital added beds and created additional patient rooms.
“I’m not sure with the way health care reform is moving along that more hospital beds are needed,” Mercieca said. “What’s happening now is a move from acute care to care home.
“More hospitals won’t be necessary,” she added.
Previously, a court-appointed receiver for Medical Capital Holdings, a defunct investment firm that originally issued Parkway’s mortgage, had proposed that the site become a detention center or correctional facility – an idea immediately slammed by numerous elected officials, including Weiner, state Sen. Toby Stavisky (D-Whitestone) and Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi (D-Forest Hills). No plans for such a center were ever filed, and officials said an owner would be fought tooth and nail if they attempted to erect a detention center or correctional facility at the site – located a stone’s throw from a school and residences.
By Anna Gustafson
