Goshen — After a few setbacks, the marketing of the Arden Hill Hospital site to potential buyers is about to move forward again.
Realtor R.J. Smith is working with Arden LDC, the development corporation that bought the property from Orange Regional Medical Center, to sell the site. They have just come up with a price — but have not definitely settled on it, he said.
Last year, there was panic among Village of Goshen residents about a deal in the works to sell the property to a developer with ties to the intensely developed village of Kiryas Joel. But it’s not only intensive private development that residents fear.
They also worry that a buyer might “flip” the property in a quick turnaround sale to yet another nonprofit organization that would not bring much-needed revenue to the village.
Smith said several potential buyers have approached him about the site, but that “nothing panned out.”
“We decided to just let the winter go by, and try again in the spring,” Smith said. “Now we’re saying, ‘Let’s go out and actively market it.’”
Arden Hill and Horton Hospital in Middletown have merged to form Orange Regional Medical Center, which is building a new facility in the Town of Wallkill. Arden Hill will not be vacated until 2011, Smith said.
About two years ago, Orange County Executive Ed Diana was pushing to interest the Veterans Administration in the site. His spokesperson, Rich Mayfield, said the county thought it would be a good fit because of the “extraordinarily high cost of rehabbing the buildings on the [VA’s] Castle Point campus, and here is an existing hospital up and running.”
Mayfield said Diana wrote Senator Charles Schumer and U.S. Rep. John Hall early in the process.
Smith agrees a Veterans Administration purchase would be a great thing — but that nothing is happening now.
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