Trustee: LBMC should be dissolved by spring

The demolition of homes on East State Street that were once owned by the Long Beach Medical Center comes less than two weeks after an auction of LBMC’s medical equipment, held as part of a bankruptcy order to satisfy its creditors.

However, the work has yet to include buildings on East Bay Drive or the main hospital buildings, including the west wing, which housed the emergency department.

SNCH hired Blitch Knevel Architects, based in New Orleans, earlier this year to conduct an assessment of the LBMC campus and its facilities to determine where a new emergency department could be located, and whether an alternative-use plan must be submitted to the Federal Emergency Management Agency to determine how the agency’s funds will be spent. Once that step is complete, South Nassau said, it will submit a certificate of need to the state Health Department.

SNCH officials said it is likely that the hospital’s heavily damaged eastern buildings — the three oldest on the campus — could be demolished as soon as next month.

If the west wing can be used, then South Nassau will begin renovating and restoring it, which could take at least a year. If the wing has to be demolished, however, officials said, South Nassau would likely rebuild the emergency department on the hospital grounds or work with the city to find another site in Long Beach that is centrally located — which could take longer than a year.

City officials and many residents have been calling on South Nassau to use all of its FEMA funding in Long Beach, while the Beach to Bay Central Council of Civic Associations has advocated nothing short of a full-service hospital.

Beach to Bay and others have also been calling for public hearings, which South Nassau said would be held after the medical center surrendered its operating license to the Department of Health. LBMC board Trustee Michael Kerr said that that happened about two months ago. Still, the sale of the Komanoff Center for Geriatric and Rehabilitative Medicine still needs to be finalized, and Kerr said that LBMC still has to settle “outstanding issues” relating to insurance and pensions, as well as any debts or money owed to the LBMC from the auction.