NEW AND IMPROVED
Coney Island Hospital expansion moves forward despite delays
BY JESSICA PARKS
An expansion to construct fl ood
barriers and a new tower at Coney
Island Hospital is underway despite
slight delays after the coronavirus
pandemic forced offi cials to halt work
last spring.
The neighborhood’s namesake
hospital has been rapidly expanding
since Superstorm Sandy wreaked
havoc on the medical center, using
funds from a $922-million emergency
grant awarded by the federal government
back in 2014.
The southern Brooklyn hospital’s
new tower is slated for completion
in summer of 2022 — a few months
later than originally planned — at the
same time partial construction of the
wall is expected to be ready, hospital
reps said.
The 10-story tower will rise at 2619
Ocean Parkway and house inpatient
services — currently situated in the
soon-to-be-demolished Hammett Pavilion
— with a ground fl oor lobby,
and medical services beginning on
the second fl oor to
keep equipment above
the fl ood level. Unlike
many medical centers,
the new tower will
also feature solely single
patient rooms.
“We went from an
old, 1954 building to
what is a state-of-theart
facility,” said Dan
Collins, the hospital’s
senior director of facilities,
in an interview
with Brooklyn
Paper. “With older
buildings, you have
multiple patients in
a room, these are all
single beds.”
The new facility
will include an emergency
department on
its second fl oor, a radiology
department
on the third fl oor,
and a state-of the-art
surgical suite on the
fourth fl oor. Floor fi ve
will keep mechanical
equipment for the new
tower and main campus far above the
fl ood levels to ensure the hospital is
still powered in the event of fl oods,
while fl oors six through 10 will house
Caribbean L 26 ife, MAY 7-13, 2021
single-bed inpatient rooms, and a labor
and delivery department. The
tower’s ninth and tenth fl oors will
also house the hospital’s behavioral
A look at the new plans for Coney Island Hospital. Coney Island Hospital
health department.
Most of the new building’s most
prominent features are situated on
higher fl oors to keep the facility operational
in case of emergency, Collins
said. “In the event of fl ooding, all
of that critical infrastructure raised
about fl ood levels will allow us to keep
operating,” he told Brooklyn Paper.
Since the tower is being erected
in a space that currently includes the
hospital’s parking lot, it will also feature
underground parking and the
building’s ground fl oor lobby will be
constructed using fl ood-proof materials.
While pandemic shutdowns led to
slight delays to the completion of the
new tower, demolition of the 110-yearold,
six-story Hammett Pavilion is expected
to commence shortly after the
tower’s completion to make way for
the four-foot fl ood wall that will be
erected around the hospital’s main
campus by mid-2023. The fl ood wall
will be outfi tted with a series of gates
that will close during fl oods.
“The fl ood wall is a substantial
wall and is prepared for a Hurricane
Sandy-type event,” Collins said.
The expansion was announced by
hospital administrators in 2018 and
required permits from the state’s Department
of Environmental Conservation
as their plans required draining
groundwater in order to construct
an elevator pit. A draft permit shows
contractors planned to dump the fi ltered
and treated groundwater into
nearby Coney Island Creek.
Health