Well, at least it was only $21 million
Back at the end of March, near the height of the pandemic outbreak in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal at Red Hook was going to be converted to a temporary hospital to handle the anticipated overflow of COVID-19 patients. In a remarkable display of the normally stagnant bureaucracy moving at lightning speed, money for the project was “found,” a contractor from Texas was signed on and the work began. In only a few weeks, the facility was ready to go into operation. And now the makeshift medical center is closing… without ever having treated a single patient.
A roughly $21 million Brooklyn field hospital authorized by the de Blasio administration at the height of the coronavirus pandemic opened and closed without ever seeing one patient, according to city officials.
The Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook was one of several sites across the five boroughs converted into a medical facility as a way to relieve the city’s overburdened hospital system as the COVID-19 crisis mounted.
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced plans on Mar. 31 — a day after the USNS Comfort hospital ship arrived in New York Harbor to aid in the coronavirus fight — for the $20.
