Community Boards, Pols Continue Fight For Emergency Room

After a series of disappointments, two local Community Boards, along with elected officials, continue to lobby for an Emergency Room at the site of the former Victory Memorial Hospital in Southwestern Brooklyn, all while attempting to rally community activism.

Bill Guarinello, Chairman of CB 11, which serves Bath Beach and Bensonhurst, announced at a recent meeting that a new effort is underway, with Assemblyman Peter Abbate and State Senator Marty Golden working alongside CB 11, as well as CB 10 in Bay Ridge, writes Brooklyn Eagle.

From the Eagle:

“Community Board 11 and Community Board 10 are working together,” Guarinello told Board 11 members at the board’s March 8 meeting.

State Sen. Marty Golden and Assemblyman Peter Abbate “are leading the discussion,” Guarinello said.

The goal is to get New York State to approve the idea of putting an emergency room in the urgent care center run by the State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center at the site at 699 92nd St., where Victory Memorial Hospital used to be.

Last November, a state panel organized by Stephen Berger – the same Stephen Berger who headed the New York State Commission on Health Care Facilities in the 21st Century, a commission that recommended Victory’s closure in 2008 – also had recommended the New York State Department of Health scuttle plans for an Emergency Room at the same site.

Assemblyman Abbate, who along with Senator Golden recently met with agents from SUNY Downstate, Lutheran Medical Center and Maimonides Medical Center about Southern Brooklyn’s health care capacity, says community action is key to making progress.

Abbate recalled the low turnouts at rallies to prevent Victory’s closure in 2008.

“We really couldn’t mobilize the community,” he admitted.