Barry Braunstein plans 240-bed nursing home on Brooklyn lot

A for-profit operator is seeking to build a long-term care facility spanning over a city block in East New York.

Barry Braunstein’s Oxford Nursing Homes filed for a rezoning to allow a 404-foot street wall for a four-story, 145,000-square-foot facility at 2832 Linden Boulevard. The application will go before Brooklyn’s Community Board 5 for an advisory opinion as the first step in the city’s land-use review procedure.

The 240-bed facility — to replace Oxford’s current Fort Greene site — is to be built on a lot between Drew and Emerald streets and include half of the adjacent, unbuilt Ruby Street. The site’s residential zoning requires street walls to be less than 185 feet.

The application argues that the 404-foot wall “is necessary to provide a better quality of life for residents of the long-term care facility.”

EmblemHealth, formerly known as the Health Insurance Plan of Greater New York, sold a one-story medical building at the Linden Boulevard lot for $11.3 million in 2019 to Braunstein’s firm. HIP had held the facility, its Lindenwood location of AdvantageCare Physicians, since the 1980s.

Braunstein received a demolition permit in 2020 and has since cleared the site.

Oxford was given the green light in 2018 for a project with 200 beds on the site. The amendment would allow for 40 more. If approved, the project is expected to be completed and occupied next year.

The current Oxford Nursing Home, seven miles away at a 90-year-old converted Elks lodge at 144 South Oxford Street in Fort Greene, has been deemed by the state Department of Health to be below nursing home standards because of its lack of disability services-compliant facilities. It’s one of the oldest nursing homes in New York City.

“Due to its age, inefficient layout, and limited light and air, this [current] building is not well suited to the operation of a modern long-term care facility,” the application says.

Initially, Braunstein wanted to build a nursing home at 141 Conover Street in Red Hook, but the City Council shut down its proposal in 2016, The Real Deal reported. The plans were ostensibly scrapped because of flooding and safety concerns.

The proposed East New York location in the Jamaica Bay Watershed may pose similar issues, but the application downplayed them.

Oxford’s plan included parking for 26 cars and 25 bicycles, a cafe/bistro, a salon and an activity room.

The site is about a block away from Brooklyn Queens Nursing Home and several major affordable housing developments, including Spring Creek Gardens, Emerald Green and Loring Estates.

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