[ back ]
Auction moved up to Feb. 27
(by Maggie Fazeli Fard - February 13, 2008)
Days after a federal court judge delayed the auction of the bankrupt Pascack Valley Hospital (PVH) by one month, the auction date was again moved up a week to Feb. 27 to accommodate the time constraints of one bidder.
Last Monday, Feb. 4, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Rosemary Gambardella agreed to push off the bidding until March 4 per the requests of a potential bidder, Connecticut-based health care consulting firm Paradigm Physician Partners (P3), and PVH’s bankruptcy attorney, Jack Zackin.
Hackensack University Medical Center (HUMC) threatened to withdraw its joint bid with Touro Medical College of Medicine to open a hospital facility and medical school on the site, claiming that the March 4 date would interfere with the accreditation process. Touro requested that the auction date be moved to Wednesday, Feb. 27.
At the River Vale Council meeting Monday night, Mayor Joseph Blundo publicly announced that the judge had agreed to the new date.
“All the original bidders are still alive,” Blundo said.
Calls to Gambardella’s office were not returned and Sharon Dilling, Touro’s director of marketing and media relations, declined to comment on the change, but Westwood Borough Attorney Russell Huntington confirmed the Feb. 27 date Tuesday morning.
Huntington said that Zackin, the PVH attorney, e-mailed him about the change.
Currently, there are three known bids for PVH’s 20-acre site. The first is the HUMC/Touro bid, which proposes to keep a hospital on-site while adding a medical school.
The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood and Englewood Hospital and Medical Center have also entered a joint bid, and P3, the firm that initially asked for the full one-month delay, plans to bid to reopen a 150-bed hospital.
PVH declared bankruptcy in September and officially closed its doors two months later. Following the closing, HUMC purchased the license for PVH’s mobile intensive care units (MICU).
“We were hoping we were going to get moving right away on this,” said Westwood Mayor John Birkner when the 30-day delay was announced. “[But] if this is what it takes to put a fully functioning hospital on that site, so be it.”
Maggie Fazeli Fard's e-mail address is fazelifard@northjersey.com.
[ back ]
