LICH RFP (Long Island College Hospital Request for Proposal) leads to RFP (Really Flawed Process) for LICH, you get the point.
My grandfather was a proud member of the ILA (International Longshoreman’s Association). Long Island College Hospital, blocks away from the ILA health center, was my family’s go-to hospital.
Now the campus of LICH is no longer a hospital, and last week its developer, FORTIS, announced that it will go ahead with an “as of right” luxury housing project, which means that no zoning change will be required. There will be no compulsion for community benefits, since there is little other than “delay and pray” tactics that can be done to stop it.
How did we get to this point?
Various people, for differing reasons get blamed, from the Mayor to the former community board chairman to Councilman Lander, but the original sin from which all else stems was the original SUNY RFP. That RFP set the table for what I fear will become manifest in Cobble Hill.
When I got to speak to Brad Lander about this last week, he put it succinctly, saying that “a public institution sold off public land for private gain, and we are getting exactly what they said they’d do in response to the RFP.” With the press focused on the Mayor’s inability to get the State to relent on the LICH closing, it has been easy to forget that SUNY(State University of New York ) owned, mismanaged and ultimately sold this property pursuant to a RFP it conceived, and that failed to include requirements for a hospital or affordable and senior housing. This may have upped the sales price, but the lack of provisos left the community without leverage to influence the development.
When the winning bidder does what it said it would do, why act surprised?
All of us concerned about healthcare and affordable housing in NYC organized in opposition to the plan in our community, sat through countless meetings and protests, and even saw a mayoral candidate and elected officials carted off to jail. But now we know it was all over with RFP and the terms set out in that document.
So while it was a really flawed process, I can’t help but remember a quote, that at this moment is applicable to national politics as well, from the great Maya Angelou:
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
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LICH was mismanaged and its leadership should have been held accountable. Moving forward, our elected officials screwed up by making demand and demand on the developers which is why the community has finally been told that there will be no space set aside for any medical facility, community public areas and affordable apartments. We can thank our local councilman Brad Lander, who along with his council associates and our mayor for this mess. It appears to me that Lander, DeBlasio, et.al., were more interested in pushing along their socialist agenda on more important issues such as the Brad Lander nickel shopping bag tax, impossible integration of our schools of which over 90% of the students are minority, insuring themselves a salary increase, restoring and then non-restoring the “F” train express, acting non-patriotically by refusing to salute the American Flag, singing at council meetings the Black Panther anthem, etc.
It is because of Democrats like Brad Lander and Bill DeBlasio that Donald Trump was able to make just enough inroads with Democrats that defeated Hillary Clinton.