Cobble Hill’s Long Island College Hospital attracts several bids

At least seven bidders are in the running to take over the struggling Long Island College Hospital in Cobble Hill, and a number of the plans include teaming up with real estate developers on potential conversion projects, the New York Daily News reported.

“The options include everything under the sun,” Craig Garner, an attorney who specializes in hospital mergers but is not involved in the LICH conversion, told the Daily News. “It could be turned into apartments. Or it could be a hospital and everything else in between.”

Proposals from seven buyers – but not their identities – were posted on the website of the hospital’s owner, SUNY Downstate, and reviewed by the Daily News. Many of the proposals call for selling a large portion of the estimated $1 billion in prime real estate – composed of five buildings and a waterfront parking lot – to private developers.

For example, one of the bidders, an out-of-state hospital network, would sell the entire complex to a developer, and then lease back enough space to keep the hospital viable. Another bidder is looking to turn LICH’s “non-core properties” into residential units while maintaining the hospital’s operations.

SUNY Downstate took over LICH in 2011 and picked up the burden of a $170 million debt, according to the Daily News. The state university medical system started courting buyers in May, anxious to relieve themselves of the investment. [NYDN] – Hiten Samtani