Greenpoint Hospital site bidders secure $500K private donation

The Greenpoint Renaissance Enterprise Corporation, a Brooklyn non-profit, has received a $500,000 private donation to strengthen its bid for developing a former Williamsburg hospital site. There are currently four proposals under review at the Department of Housing Preservation and Development for the site of Greenpoint Hospital at Kingsland and Maspeth avenues, which closed in 1982. The building was converted into a men’s homeless shelter afterwards, and in 1991 a $32 million GREC proposal to build a nursing home on the site was quashed by then-Governor George Pataki. GREC’s current proposal calls for a 10,000-square-foot senior health care facility, 90 units of senior housing and 175 units of affordable and mixed-income housing. The donation came from the Von Damm Family Foundation. The late Henry Von Damm was a Brooklyn patron and a board member of St. Nicks Alliance, which accepted the donation on behalf of GREC. The city has said in the past that it expects to make a decision on the Greenpoint Hospital site during the first quarter of 2010. [YourNabe]