City eyes cheap apts. at barren B’klyn hosp site

THE CITY is seeking proposals to transform the site of the former Greenpoint Hospital in Brooklyn — shuttered since 1982 — into hundreds of units of affordable housing, Mayor de Blasio announced Wednesday.

The Department of Housing Preservation and Development will issue a request for expressions of interest from development teams for plans to build at least 300 units on the long-languishing site, but expects proposals that could include as many as 600 — depending on whether the plans seek to rehab existing buildings on the site.

Developers will also be tasked with relocating a 200-bed shelter and a clinic that are currently inside a former hospital buildings into new structures on the same 3.4-acre site.

“The need for affordable housing in Greenpoint and Williamsburg is too high to leave even one stone unturned,” de Blasio said. “We look forward to delivering a project neighborhood residents have sought for decades, one that meets their needs and brings hundreds of new homes they can afford.”

The city, which owns the land, will not seek any marketrate housing.

“I’m tired of dealing with projects having to negotiate for what I consider crumbs in the situation,” Councilman Antonio Reynoso, who represents the area, told the News. “For this one, we’re getting the whole pie.”

But the process likely won’t be quick or easy.

Going back to Ed Koch, who was in office when the hospital closed, mayors have sought to transform the campus into affordable housing without much luck. Most recently, plans from Mayor Michael Bloomberg fell apart after the selected developer was busted on unrelated corruption charges.

The site itself presents challenges to developers — it’s large, it will contain a clinic and a homeless shelter, and it’s home to three buildings dating to 1912, which are eligible to be added to the state and national register of historic places. One is currently used as the shelter; another is home to a laundry facility that serves shelters citywide, which the city will remove from the site.

Another building, the former nurses’ quarters, was simply left, abandoned, to deteriorate.

A tour of the site on Tuesday found the property scattered with trash, clothing, mattresses and discarded hypodermic needles. But beneath the grime, obscured in the darkness that resulted from the windows being cinderblocks to keep out squatters, historic elements like turquoise-colored columns and a classic fireplace could be seen.

The city will give preference to proposals that include groups with historic preservation experience — but it will also consider plans that include preservation and new construction, and proposals that would tear the buildings down for new ones.

“Because it’s such a large site, we’re really trying to generate the most creative and best possible ideas to get some much needed affordable housing built in this community, along with some other community uses,” said Leila Bozorg, the Housing Department’s deputy commissioner of neighborhood strategies.

For that reason, the city is issuing the request for expression of interest, rather than proposals — a more open-ended process that she said gives the city more options in working with developers and gives developers more flexibility in pitching ideas.

The request comes after the Housing Department held “community visioning” sessions to gauge local desires for the site — whose sidewalks this week were strewn with trash, and which is just across the street from a wellmanicured park.