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City calls for proposals to develop Greenpoint Hospital into 100 percent affordable housing building

Greenpoint Hospital Complex/HPD

Sept. 1, 2017 By Nathaly Pesantez

The city has begun to accept plans for ideas to develop the former Greenpoint Hospital complex, a site partially abandoned and sitting between Greenpoint and Williamsburg, into affordable housing.

Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city is moving forward with a plan to develop 500 affordable and supportive housing apartment at the Greenpoint Hospital site at 288 Jackson Street during a town hall meeting in Williamsburg on Aug. 30, noting that the site went into limbo in 1983.

“It makes no sense in a community desperate for affordable housing that this prime site has been sitting there for all this time,” de Blasio said.

The site, over 146,000 square-feet, has three main areas—the vacant former Nurses’ Residence Building, a Department of Homeless Services’ laundry distribution facility, and a men’s homeless shelter facility in the former hospital building.

Developers must adhere to a framework when contributing their ideas, which includes creating a mixed-use, fully affordable development and implementing a 200-bed shelter to replace the existing shelter. A clinic to serve the community and residents of the shelter is also listed as a requirement for developers to maintain.

The site is also expected to be rezoned to accommodate for more people and units.

Plans for the former Greenpoint Hospital site were put forth immediately after its closing in the 1980s by several groups, but have been halted through the decades for a variety of reasons, including a case during Mayor Bloomberg’s administration when the developer selected for the site was involved in a corruption scandal.