Borough Park, NY – he nonprofit Metropolitan Jewish Geriatric Center in Brooklyn is being sold for $60 million to Boro Park Operating Co. and the Boro Park Land Co., a for-profit which does business as the Boro Park Center for Rehabilitation and Healthcare. The 354-bed nonprofit nursing home is located at 4915 10th Ave. in Brooklyn.
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On Tuesday, the nursing home informed the state Department of Labor that it will be laying off 506 employees when it completes the sale. The notice, a Workers Adjustment and Retraining Notification, indicates the workers will be laid off by Dec. 1.
The new owner is Kenneth Rozenberg, who has been on a buying spree. He signed asset purchase agreements earlier this month with Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers to buy the Bishop Francis J. Mugavero Center for Geriatric Care and St. Jerome’s Health Services Corp., which does business as Holy Family Home. Mr. Rozenberg also recently had the winning bid to buy the John J. Foley Nursing Home in Yaphank from Suffolk County.
According to state documents about the sale, Mr. Rozenberg’s company estimates the nursing home will earn $1.1 million on revenue of $44.2 million under new ownership, with a 98.3% occupancy rate.
1199 SEIU has about 379 workers at Metropolitan Jewish Geriatric Center. The union has not yet received the required 90-day notice from Mr. Rozenberg, but it is expected shortly, said Mike Rifkin, executive vice president and nursing home division director of 1199.
The union has three years left on its contract with the nursing home, and the sale does not mean the workers will lose their jobs. “He has a legal obligation under the [National Labor Relations Board] rules to negotiate with the union,” said Mr. Rifkin, adding that the union anticipates Mr. Rozenberg will assume the 1199 SEIU contract as he has done with other nursing home purchases. “We expect this to be a formality. If not, we will ask our members what they want to do.”
Metropolitan Jewish Geriatric Center is changing from nonprofit to for-profit hands, but the union does not expect Mr. Rozenberg to “cut corners to save costs, which does not play out well for our members or for the residents who receive a very good level of patient care at MJGC,” Mr. Rifkin said.
The center’s day health care program, long-term home health care program and hospice program were not included in the sale.
I volunteered at their HOSPICE unit years ago. For profit nursing homes mean that low income elderly folk will no longer be able to afford services.
He is expected to make 1.1 million, and he’s buying it for 60 million. Why do those numbers seem out of balance?
Maybe now it will be a better place till now it was a sin to put in there a human being there was no one to talk to
I feel bad for the workers, some who have been there many years. However, the people who run Metropolitan Health System are not the nicest people. They had bad management for many years and now now they are paying the price. It is shame, the nursing home started out in East NY on Howard ave. in early 1900’s. They built the facility in B.P. in the 1970’s. I hate to say it, they got what they deserve. The facility in coney Island Shorefront is probaly next to go.