Hospital parent gets OK for bond refinancing
KINGSTON, N.Y. >> The Ulster County Industrial Development Agency board on Wednesday agreed to let HealthAlliance of the Hudson Valley refinance about $20 million in bonds that initially were taken out by Benedictine Hospital in 1999 and reissued in 2006.
Benedictine and Kingston hospitals became affiliated under the HealthAlliance umbrella a decade ago. Benedictine now is known as the HealthAlliance Hospital Mary’s Avenue Campus, and Kingston Hospital is known as the Broadway Campus.
Wednesday’s action allows HealthAlliance to refinance a $19.3 million taxexempt civic facility revenue bond and a $710,000 taxable civic facility revenue bond.
In a letter to the Industrial Development Agency, HealthAlliance attorney Andrew Schulson said the refinancing is needed because of money the company is being loaned by the state.
“HealthAlliance ... has entered into a loan with the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York for $2,200,000 ... [some of which] was used to fund uses of the hospital,” he wrote. “DASNY has requested that the hospital guaranty that loan and place a mortgage against the real estate and gross receipts of the hospital.”
The original bonding, in 1999, was to help thenBenedictine Hospital renovate the 250,000-squarefoot facility, build an 8,000-square-foot addition and but new equipment.
The renovations included improvements to the hospital’s emergency room, though that part of the hospital ultimately closed in 2010, when HealthAlliance consolidated the emergency services of its two local hospitals into the Broadway Campus.
Industrial Development Agency attorney Joseph Scott said Wednesday that the bonds initially were authorized under rules governing municipal development agencies that have changed since then.
“This was back when IDAs could do not-forprofit projects,” Scott said.
HealthAlliance was taken over by the Westchester Medical Center Health Network in 2016 and now plans to consolidate all hospital services, including an emergency department, into the Mary’s Avenue Campus. That project, which is to include building an addition at the Mary’s Avenue site, is excepted to cost $92 million.
The Broadway Campus is to become a multi-discipline “medical village.”