NYU Langone Health is aiming to build a more than $3 billion medical center on more than 40 acres at Nassau Community College, said County Executive Bruce Blakeman.
The facility “would create thousands of jobs and it would be an investment of more than $3 billion,” Blakeman said at a news conference in Mineola on Thursday. “We will be negotiating that possibility in the coming week,” he said.
Blakeman also discussed the plan at Nassau Community College’s graduation ceremony on Wednesday night, where he told graduates that the facility would be “the state-of-the-art, number one hospital in America.” The 225-acre community college campus in Garden City, which includes about 50 buildings, has approximately 20,000 full-time and part-time students.
Ken Langone, Home Depot co-founder and chairman of the NYU Langone board of directors, said he hopes the new medical center will be “up and running” within five years. “I’m 87 years old, so I want it to happen yesterday,” he joked in an interview.
NYU Langone plans to purchase the land for the medical center, at an unnegotiated price, Langone said. He estimated the total cost could be between $2 billion and $3 billion, “to be conservative”.
The Manhattan-based 591-bed Mineola Hospital, NYU Langone Hospital-Long Island, formerly Winthrop University Hospital, is less than five miles from the NCC site. The Mineola facility needs to be expanded, but there is no room for it at its current location, Langone said.
A new hospital at NCC would provide more space for inpatient and medical school facilities, he said. NYU Langone would continue to operate the facility in Mineola, though it’s possible it could eventually become an outpatient center, with inpatient care and medical school operations on the NCC site, he said. All plans require regulatory approval, Langone said.
The state Department of Health must approve applications for new hospitals and major changes to existing hospitals.
Langone said the new medical center would benefit local residents by providing more high-quality health care, and NCC students by providing more education and job opportunities. “Think of the number of kids going to” NCC, he said. “Healthcare is a growing business.” In 2019, Langone donated $100 million to make NYU’s medical school tuition-free for all students. The health system changed its name to NYU Langone in 2008, after Langone and his wife Elaine donated $200 million.
In a statement, NYU Langone said it is in “exploratory discussions to develop a new, state-of-the-art” medical center, including a teaching hospital and medical teaching and research facility, on the NCC campus. NYU Langone said the hospital would be a “quaternary care” facility, a reference to hospitals whose services include the most specialized health care, such as experimental treatments and unusual surgeries.
The medical center would rise on “underused land” on campus, NYU Langone said. The healthcare system plans to “expand our investment in Long Island and provide world-class healthcare to its residents. We will share additional details as the project progresses,” a spokesperson, Steve Ritea, said in the statement.
The health system is also in the process of merging with the 306-bed Long Island Community Hospital in Patchogue, where it says it will spend $100 million on the first round of upgrades.
NYU Langone operates more than 300 locations in the New York area, including more than 100 on Long Island, and has 700,000 square feet of new outpatient facilities under development on Long Island, according to the health system. The expansion of the outpatient network has increased demand for services at Mineola Hospital, Langone said.
Blakeman outlined the origins of the NCC proposal when he spoke about it at events Wednesday and Thursday.
The plan kicked off when Langone approached the county last year, Blakeman said. Langone, who lives in Nassau County, said he was looking for a place to build a new NYU Langone campus, Blakeman said, “I told him, ‘There’s only one place to go, Nassau Community College.'”
The facility, Blakeman said Thursday, “would have an amazing effect on the community college because there would be internship programs, it would be great for the unions, there will be internship programs, it will be great for the whole environment.” companies.”
– With Ken Schachter and Candice Ferrette