Daily News from New York, New York • 247

KL7 DAILY NEWS, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 29.1S75 I 1 J4 Begin Building By BRYANT MASON Lutheran Medical Center will begin construction next month of a 532-bed hospital at 55th St. and Second it was announced yesterday. The hospital, a long-needed facility for the Sunset Park-Bay Ridge communities, will frcl- EfiK million. ol 1,0 News pnoto Dy Eawara Monnari John RulH, of Ports and Terminals Department, hammers barricade into place across entrance of 69th St. pier as Thomas McDonald (center), a fireman, and Councilman John Gangemi watch.

Funds for Pier Job Eld Again By JERRY ADLER The City Council yesterday approved an appropriation of $660,000 for of the crumbling 69th St. pier in Bay Ridge, and there is some hope, Council sources will actually be spent. 1 The new -medical complex, which will replace Lutheran's present hospital facilities, will be constructed in the converted shell of the former American Machine and Foundry building, a block from the Brooklyn waterfront, said a hospital spokesman. Bed capacity will be expanded from the present 300 beds to 532 beds and the staff will be increased fropi 1,200 to approximately 1,800 employes. The new center will proviae primary care, and offer extensive ambulatory, emergency and diag nostic services to meet tne health needs of the two communities.

The four-story hospital will be on 4A acres in a very deteriorated area of Sunset Park. "I'm hoping that this hospital will be the catalyst to revitalize the whole area," said Andrew DiOrio, chairman of Planing Board 7. who has been working on the project since 1968. To Restore Confidence "By placing a major community institution at 55th St. and Second we are applying therapy to the sickest part of our neighborhood, said Ueorge Adams, president of Lutheran Medical Center.

"We hope this move will begin to restore confi dence a neglected part of our city and reverse the downward economic trend lines which threaten all of southwest Brooklyn." Demolition at the factory site has been going on for the past two months said a hospital spokesman. By stripping the building to reinforced concrete, the hospital expects to save an estimated S310 million on the cost of girders and cement. Thj bulk of funding for the said, that this time the money The funds were contained in a revised 1975 capital budget for the Economic Development Administration, which the mayor approved last Dec. A slightly smaller appropriation had been voted by the Council last July, but the had been frozen in an economy cove by the mayor's office. Yesterday's action followed the wall UP nere to keep kids oil.

Considered a Hazard The 593-foot-long pier, which once served the Narrows ferry to Staten Island, has missing planks and a gaping hole at one end. and is considered a hazard by many in the neighborhood. An aide to Gangemi promised a six-to-eight-foothigh barricade "by next Friday or Monday." But an aide at the Department of Ports and Terminals said that Coniissioner Edgar Fabber had ordered a. "barricade," and that a "barricade" the timber was already up. No further work would be done, said the aide, except by Fab-ber's specific order.

Fabber is out of town and expected to return "We put a wall up there last year," the spokesman said. "It took four men three days to do it. We finished on a Friday and by Saturday it had been pulled down." "The next step Is to get a construction of a timber bar- i ricade to keep cars off the dan gerous pier the first tangible result of a months-long campaign by Councilman-at-large John Gangemi to make the dock safe. "I'm very pleased we're finally getting some satisfaction on this," Gangemi said as he inspected the loot-high barrier. by the Landmarks Freserva- Designate Pmkway.

A Scenic Landmark By JOHN TOSCANO The six-mile-long Ocean Parkway, the first roadway of its kind built in the United States, was designated as a a loan from the New York Medical Care Finance Agency in cooperation with the State Department of Health. The 40-year loan, the largest ever made under the New York State hospital construction program, represents money raised through a special state bond issue. Raised 1.9M To meet the 3 equity requirement for the loan, Lutheran Med-" ical Center raised $1,900,000 in donations from private foundations, churches, physicfans, employes and community groups. The hospital, which is slated for occupancy in mid-1977, will replace Lutheran's 1910 vintage buildings at 4520 Fourth Ave. The Sunset Park Redevelop-; ment Committee, an organization of community groups, has worked on the planning of the hospital, said DiOrio.

City Council President Thomas Cuite -and Councilman Angelo Arculeo assisted in -getting a $40,000 feasibility study by the Economic Development Administration to prove that the former factory could be converted into a modern hospital. Every patient's room in the hospital will be private or semi-pri- vate with its own bathroom and shower. The hospital will be cen-taliy air-conditioned and temperature controlled. Architecture 3 School Buys AFirehouse By JOYCE WHITE In a fast-paced auction with soaring bidding, a landmark building which once housed Brooklyn fire headquarters was bought yesterday for $55,000 by the Institute of Design and Construction. The seven-story, copper-trimmed firehouse is located at 365-67 Jay St.

and was built in 1898 with a windowed watchtower where during the 1900s firemen took turns watching for fires throughout Brooklyn. Bidding at the auction yesterday, which was held at the Hotel Commodore, Manhattan, were former Assemblyman Vito Bat-tista, director of the Institute of Design and Construction," 141 Willoughby and Albert E. Struck, vice president of administration and finances at Polytechnic Institute of New York. "The most exciting thing about the event was that an architectural gem has been bought by an architectural school," Battista exclaimed moments after Polytechnic bowed out with a bid of $51,000. Battista said the school, which has about 400 students and offers associate degrees in building construction and structural design, will use the firehouse as its headquarters.

Battista refused to say how-much more than i school was willing to pay for the building, but indicated he was ready to place his bids considerably 28 Left Homeless by Morning Fire lite i vrK. scenic landmark yesterday tion Commission. Landmarks head Beverly Moss Spatt said the designation, which must be ratified by the Board of Estimate, will not interfere with the rehabilitation of the artery, which stretches from Church Ave. in Flatbush to Seabreeze Ave. in the Brighton Beach section.

"Since this is a public facility," she said, "we would only be permitted to offer an advisory opinion regarding rehabilitation plans." However, she said she has been assured by the city's Department of Highways that the plans do not call for the 20-foot malls to be made narrower as previously proposed. Although community prroups favor plans to resurface the roadway and rebuild the malls, they have generally opposed the widening of the parkway by eliminating: part of the malls. Two weeks ago, Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman (D-Brooklyn) informed the chairmen of Community Planning: Boards 12 and that federal, state and city highway officials had tentatively agreed on plans to finance rehabilitation of the 100-year-old road. The federal and state governments will put up the major part of the funds.

In announcing the scenic landmark designation, Mrs. Spatt said that the parkway "serves as much more than a road between Prospect Park and Coney Island." She said the malls are "an important part of the daily living" of residents living alongside the News photo by Dan Sforza A mother carries her child front 713 Metropolitan Bushwick, where a one-alarm fire, winch broke out at 9:30 a.m. yesterday morning, left 23 people homeless. The fire, which started on the fifth floor of the six-story building, took 40 fire fighters from 10 companies to bring under control at 9:38 a.m. The residents were relocated in the Hotel Jranwda 288 Ashland Place.

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