Philadelphia Hospital to Stay Closed After Owner Requests Nearly $1 Million a Month

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/us/coronavirus-philadelphia-hahnemann-hospital.html?fbclid=IwAR2KiMuBAO8wgNKY9SBesFoEGmxxfukpmW_9-Lp_UY3kB_ESmoQnvOk25e4

By Maria Cramer
Published March 27, 2020
Updated March 29, 2020

A hospital with room for nearly 500 beds has been closed for months in the center of Philadelphia, a city bracing for the spread of the coronavirus and a crush of sick patients.

But the facility will remain empty, city officials said, because they cannot accept the owner’s offer: buy the hospital or lease it for almost $1 million a month, including utilities and other costs.

“We don’t have the need to own it nor the resources to buy it. So we are done and we are moving on,” Mayor Jim Kenney told reporters on Thursday during the city’s daily briefing.

The next day, he said that Temple University would let the city use a music and sports venue for free. The city would no longer pursue the closed facility, Hahnemann University Hospital.

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The owner of the hospital, Joel Freedman of Broad Street Healthcare Properties, a real estate company, said he had offered to sell the facility to the city well below market price, or to lease it for $60 a bed a day, far less than what two other hospitals in California agreed to charge to lease their facilities.

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Since last fall, the hospital has sat empty and fallen into disrepair, Mayor Kenney said on Thursday. “It has no beds and would require extensive work to make it usable again,” he said.

Mr. Kenney said the city had offered to lease the hospital for a “nominal” amount and pay for its maintenance and expenses, a deal that would have meant “hundreds of thousands of dollars a month” for Mr. Freedman and made the property more marketable in the future.

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