Report: The Brooklyn Hospital Center is selling $100 million property next to Fort Greene Park

January 29, 2018 By Lore Croghan Brooklyn Daily Eagle

That's 240 Willoughby St. at right, seen from Fort Greene Park. Eagle photos by Lore Croghan

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Ka-ching!

The Brooklyn Hospital Center has lined up an approximately $100 million deal to sell a building located right next to Fort Greene Park.

According to Crain’s New York Business, the publication to first report the pending deal, the Rabsky Group agreed to buy a medical facility known as the Maynard Building at 240 Willoughby St. in Fort Greene.

As the Brooklyn Eagle has reported, the Rabsky Group is a prolific developer that bought a sought-after DUMBO development site from the Jehovah’s Witnesses, 69 Adams St., for $65 million in late 2016.

The Brooklyn Hospital Center put 21-story 240 Willoughby St. up for sale in early 2016, a Curbed.com story says.

According to that report, the hospital planned to use the sale proceeds to help fund the construction of a new urgent care center and do renovations at its main hospital campus.

A hospital spokesman did not immediately respond to the Eagle’s request for comment on the pending property sale.

The Brooklyn Hospital Center, whose main address is 121 DeKalb Ave., is a 170-year-old institution.

Its sale of 240 Willoughby St. — which has medical offices and apartments for hospital employees — would give the Rabsky Group a prime location for a luxury residential development right next to Fort Greene Park.

The Crain’s story says an approximately 350,000-square-foot residential property can be built there — or a much bigger building if the Rabsky Group is able to upzone a nearby site now occupied by a parking garage, which it will then buy from the hospital and combine with the 240 Willoughby Street site.

According to city Finance Department records, The Brooklyn Hospital Center has owned the 240 Willoughby St. site through an entity called Ashland Place Houses Inc. since the 1970s.

In that era, the property was part of the Fort Greene Urban Renewal Area, Finance Department records show.

The Brooklyn Hospital Center plans to relocate 240 Willoughby St.’s medical offices to leased space in a new building at 620 Fulton St. that belongs to the New York City Hotel and Motel Trades Council’s employee benefit fund, the Crain’s report said.

The new building is in the Brooklyn Cultural District, across the street from Theatre for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center.