There has been a rumor that the Rivington Center for Nursing & Rehabilitation will be closing its doors by Dec. 11. The Lo-Down got confirmation of this impending closure yesterday. (Read their article here.)
For nearly 20 years the Rivington House operated as a nursing home for AIDS patients here at 45 Rivington St. between Forsyth and Eldridge on the Lower East Side. Let's go to The Lo-Down for some background:
Its previous owner, VillageCare, closed the location and sold the building to The Allure Group, a for-profit nursing care provider. The idea was to run the 215-bed center as a nursing home for the general population. The Rivington Center for Nursing & Rehabilitation opened this past February with a limited number of patients. But it has now become apparent that the bureaucratic hurdles of making the facility work are insurmountable.
The Allure Group reportedly plans to open another facility nearby.
An EVG reader told us about the closure this past weekend. The reader had actually been a patient there for a period of time earlier this year, and heard the news from staffers who will be reassigned to other Allure-owned facilities.
So what's next?
Public records show that on Nov. 10, The Allure Group paid $16.15 million for the deed from the city. As The Lo-Down notes, "As part of that deal, the city administration lifted a restriction in place since 1992 requiring the property to operate as a not-for-profit residential health care facility." In addition, The Lo-Down hears from residential neighbors who are "anticipating a market rate residential conversion of the building."
Back to the EVG reader: "The building is incredible with 12-foot ceilings and a penthouse floor that has a view from the UN to all of Midtown and Downtown. I knew it was doomed to have developers all over it from the first day I got there."
What developer around here would buy a nursing home for use as luxury housing? We can think of one for starters.
7 comments:
"...the city administration lifted a restriction...requiring the property to operate as a not-for-profit residential health care facility" - and the great liberal socialist Bloomblasio allowed this to happen why, precisely? And - "it has now become apparent that the bureaucratic hurdles of making the facility work are insurmountable" - translation: an alluring group with 16.5 million clams to burn somehow didn't have enough left over to hire an employee smart enough to work with the city, suggesting to me that their plan all along was to turn this lovely building into condos. Plenty of other groups work through city hurdles (although shame on the city for making it so difficult), so the Allure Group's (stupid name, and definitely more of a "hip condo owner" name than a "senior residence" name) "plans to open another facility nearby" confirm it - why do they think they will be able to make it work in a new (doubtless less attractive and desirable) location if they can't make a go of it in a building already use as a senior facility, one that has been restricted to that kind of operation for almost a quarter of a century? This is nothing more than yet another bait and switch perpetrated on residents by a city that only cares about how much profit they can get from selling us all out, and a real estate investment group with the same greedy goal.
This is fucking scummy.
Gojira is 100% correct. The name "Allure" was clear indicator from the get-go.
Wasn't this the location of Adam Purple's Garden of Eden?
No.
Adam's garden close - it was around the corner and up the block on Forsyth Street, between Rivington and Stanton.
I want that penthouse floor! Can't wait to see how the apartments turn out, I bet they're awesome.
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