DIOCESE OF BROOKLYN SET TO SELL

                                                   SITE OF ST. ANTHONY’S HOSPITAL

The Diocese of Brooklyn has reached an agreement to sell the former site of St. Anthony’s Hospital in Woodhaven to the Ciampa Organization, a Flushing-based firm

that has developed properties in the county for more than 70 years.

            The developer will construct semi-attached two-family homes on part of the 7.2-acre property. The firm is negotiating with the New York City School Construction Authority to build an early childhood learning center on the remainder of the site.

Bishop Thomas V. Daily announced the transaction this week. It is expected that the principals will close on the property in early Summer. The sale price is $14.5 million.

Queens Borough President called the announcement “good news for the community,” adding that the new residences and school “will help to meet the growing needs of an area where a burgeoning school population has challenged the resources of the Department of Education.”

“I want to thank the Diocese of Brooklyn and the Ciampa Organization for recognizing the needs of the community and responding to them in a very practical and helpful way,” she said. “I have been a longtime supporter of the building plan.”

The Queens official promised to monitor the progress of negotiations with the School Construction Authority “as the approval process for the early childhood center moves forward.”

Long a Woodhaven Blvd. landmark, St. Anthony’s Hospital was opened in 1914 by the Franciscan Sisters of the Poor to care for indigent patients suffering from tuberculosis. The Sisters served there until l966 when the building was closed.

For more than 20 of the intervening years between the hospital’s closing and its demolition in 2001, the Catholic Medical Center of Brooklyn and Queens (CMC) used a portion of the building for back-office space and medical research.

            Over the years, a series of acquisitions and deed transfers involving the Diocese, CMC and the Franciscan Sisters paved the way for the planned sale of the property to the Ciampa Organization.

 When the purchase is completed, the funds it will generate will underwrite the cost of several projects that “enhance and continue the Church’s mission in our Diocese,” said Msgr. John J. Bracken, the Vicar for Temporalities.

 One is the conversion of the convent in Our Lady Queen of Martyrs parish in Forest Hills into the Bishop Joseph P. Denning Residence for assisted living for ten senior priests. Catholic Charities will operate the facility.

Another is the purchase of property owned by the Lithuanian Franciscan Fathers on Highland Blvd. in the East New York section of Brooklyn for a monastery that will be the home of six-to-eight contemplative Carmelite Sisters. It will mark the return to the Diocese of the religious community, which closed its Brooklyn monastery in l997.

            The proceeds from the sale will also cover a number of costs related to the former hospital that the Diocese has already underwritten, including a payment to St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers, the successor to CMC, for its share of the property and for the razing of the building. Real estate taxes and closing expenses are other associated costs.

Before moving ahead with the sale of the property, Bishop Daily consulted with the diocesan Finance Council and the diocesan College of Consultors as required by canon law. He also sought and received permission from the Vatican’s Congregation for the Clergy to proceed with the transaction, also as called for by Church law.