Hospital Shuttered but MD and Ambulance Parking Lingers Outside Beth Israel
Despite the hospital’s closing on April 9, 2025, ambulances and cars and SUVs with “MD” plates still remain parked outside the now-defunct hospital, prompting civilian questions about why the choice parking spaces are still reserved for a shut-down hospital
| 25 Jul 2025 | 04:58
Beth Israel was shut down more than three months ago by Mount Sinai but there are still 40 parking spaces reserved for ambulances and private vehicles of doctors round the closed facility–which has no patients and no emergency room. Note the painted over “Emergency” sign overhead. (
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A Mount Sinai ambulance and a Seniorcare ambulance regularly park in the ambulance spaces that are still reserved for the vehicles outside the former Beth Israel Hospital on E. 16th St. even thoungh Mount Sinai shut the facility completely in early April. There is no longer an emergency room and there are no patients inside. (
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![Up to 40 vehicles with “MD” plates still park in spaces reserved for “doctors licence plates only” [see sign] outside the shut down Beth Israel Hospital on E. 16th St. and surrounding blocks. Mount Sinai closed the hospital in April. No patients are inside.](http://www.otdowntown.com/binrepository/576x432/0c0/0d0/none/3340031/VACF/doctors-vehicles_4-9288680_20250725124027.jpg "Hospital Shuttered but MD and Ambulance Parking Lingers Outside Beth Israel")
Up to 40 vehicles with “MD” plates still park in spaces reserved for “doctors licence plates only” [see sign] outside the shut down Beth Israel Hospital on E. 16th St. and surrounding blocks. Mount Sinai closed the hospital in April. No patients are inside. (
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A luxury condo building is being erected on E. 17th St. in a former nursing school known as Frieman Hall that was owned by Beth Israel. Mount Sinai sold the two parcelt site at 313 and 303 E. 17th St. for $34 million in January as it was fighting to shut down the main Beth Israel Hospital. (
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Work is underway by a developer converting a one-time nurses school for Beth Israel on E. 17th St. into a 96 unit luxury apartment complex that will have a number of apartments taking up an entire floor. Demolition work inside began recently. Beth Israel sold the former Frieman Hall for $34 million in January. (
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Signs posted outside Beth Israel leave little doubt the facility is closed and is not accepting any patients. (
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Cars bearing MD plates line E. 16th St. outside the former Beth Israel Hospital which has had no patients since Mount Sinai closed the facility more than three months ago. The DOT has yet to take down the signs designating spots for doctors and ambulances. (
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More than three months since Beth Israel Hospital officially shut its doors, ambulances and doctors’ private cars remain parked outside the now-defunct East 16th Street facility. The sight has raised eyebrows among neighborhood residents. Mount Sinai won a protracted and acrimonious battle to finally close the 135-year-old hospital on April 9, citing mounting financial losses that amounted to more than $1 billion in 10 years.
But at least 30 to 40 spaces that ring the hospital on East 16th and East 17th streets are still reserved for doctors and ambulances, even though the emergency room is closed and no patients have been inside for over three months.
The Mount Sinai Media Relations Team did not respond to multiple requests for comment as to why there are still vehicles taking up parking spaces for a former hospital where doctors no longer work and where ambulances no longer deliver trauma patients.
An aide to City Council Member Carlina Rivera, whose district includes the hospital and who was among the many politicians who campaigned against its closing, referred our parking questions to the Department of Transportation.
The DOT has not responded to Straus Media’s request for comment.
The speculation from the moment the plan to close Beth Israel was unveiled was that Mount Sinai wanted to sell the property in a multi-million-dollar deal to a developer who would inevitably erect a luxury high-rise in the prime neighborhood directly across from Stuyvesant Town /Peter Cooper Village. A number of luxury buildings and a branch of the New School have been rising on the west side of First Avenue in recent months.
In fact, demolition has just begun on another planned luxury building on East 17th Street, in a building that once housed a nurses school for Beth Israel, Crain’s New York Business reported on July 22.
The builder at the site that previously contained Fierman Hall, a nurses school that was turned into an office building, is Borough Developers, which plans to erect a 96-unit luxury apartment building on the site near First Avenue, according to the report, which cited public records.
Plans call for a 12- to 13-story, 68,000-square-foot project with 87 of the units in the 313 E. 17th St. address; nine units will be full-floor residences at the former 321 E. 17th St., according to the records. Crain’s said both buildings are being officially merged for the development, which was designed by Kao-Hwa Lee Architects. Borough Developers closed on $25 million in financing for the project from Valley National Bank in May, based on the city register. Beth Israel, despite the protracted fight to keep the main hospital open, was able to sell the two plots in Fierman Hall to Brooklyn-based Joyland Management in January for a combined total of about $34 million because the buildings had been vacant for years and were not part of the operating hospital.
The relationship between Joyland and Borough Developers isn’t clear, according to Crain’s. A sign on the building site lists an LLC, Three One Three, on 199 Lee Ave. #471 in Brooklyn as the building owner, Straus News found. That is an address of B Management, presumably an affiliate of Borough Developers, headed by CEO Mendel Berkowitz. The sign lists the contractor as Thors LLC at 185 Marcy Ave. #32A in Brooklyn, which is another address for Borough Developers.
The anticipated completion date for that luxury condo is “summer 2026.”
Demolition has just begun on a planned luxury building on East 17th Street, in a building that once housed a nurses school for Beth Israel. — Crain’s New York Business