A Rare Happy Ending for a Land-Use Controversy in Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan has a new, $140-million facility that aims to serve as a “one-stop shop” for behavioral health, mental health, substance abuse treatment, and primary care. The Mount Sinai-Behavioral Health Center, located at 45 Rivington Street (near the Williamsburg Bridge), has the capacity to treat more than 100 inpatient clients. More than half of these beds are reserved for patients experiencing mental health crisis, with the remainder set aside for drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs. The Behavioral Health Center also includes one of New York State’s first Intensive Crisis Residences, a new clinical approach to mental health intervention comprised of a short-term therapeutic residence in a home-like setting for people experiencing acute emotional crises not severe enough to warrant hospitalization. This strategy can additionally serve as a segue from an acute hospital stay to help patients transition more safely back into the community.
The new facility is a component of the Mount Sinai Health System’s Department of Psychiatry, which includes more than 40 labs, 130 research faculty members, and 15 major research centers. The debut of the Behavioral Health Center comes at a time when the total count of mental health beds is shrinking through the New York metropolitan region, even as the incidence of behavioral and emotional disorders is spiking.
“This new facility will help change the lives of thousands of patients and introduce a new model of comprehensive care that will improve the entire field of behavioral health for decades to come,” said Dr. Dennis S. Charney, dean of the Mount Sinai Health System medical school at the June 8 ribbon cutting ceremony.
The launch of the Behavioral Health Center represents a victory for the Lower Manhattan community in another respect. Rivington House (as the building at 45 Rivington Street is known) was the focus of a major scandal that tainted the first year of then-Mayor Bill de Blasio’s tenure. In 2014, the building, which had served for decades as an HIV/AIDS care facility, was acquired by a real estate developer, the Allure Group, which paid $28 million—a fraction of its market value—because of a deed restriction that committed the building to use as a clinic. After lobbying to get this encumbrance lifted, Allure paid the City an additional $16 million to remove the covenant that limited the property to its legacy use of non-profit, residential healthcare.
With the building’s use thus unrestricted, Allure was able to sell Rivington House to another developer, two years later, for $116 million—a profit of $72 million. The new owners, a partnership led by the Slate Group, quickly announced plans to shutter the HIV/AIDS facility and convert the building into more than 100 luxury condominiums.
After a firestorm of criticism erupted over what was widely perceived as a giveaway of a vitally needed and valuable public asset, multiple officials in the de Blasio administration claimed to have been unaware that the new owners could reap such a windfall or modify the building’s use. This claim was called into question when investigators discovered that James Capalino, a fund-raiser for Mr. de Blasio’s campaigns, who had begun a lucrative career as a lobbyist, represented several sides in the Rivington transactions, and had worked behind the scenes to get the deed restriction lifted. Then-City Comptroller Scott Stringer described this web of deal-making as “highway robbery.”
That saga continued in 2019, when the Slate Group and its partners acknowledged that they had sold Rivington House, this time for $159 million—reaping an additional profit of $43 million. In this transaction, the new owners deliberately sought to conceal their identities, cloaking themselves behind their attorneys and a specially-created holding company. These purchasers quickly negotiated a lease with the Mount Sinai Health System, under which that organization will occupy the building for the next three decades. After this lease was signed, Mount Sinai began the planning process that culminated with the June 8 opening of the Behavioral Health Center.