HOBOKEN – The city-owned Hoboken University Medical
Center’s land and building is for sale for $90 million,
a real estate firm confirmed yesterday.

Manhattan-based Grubb Ellis has the hospital listed
as a “long term sale leaseback,” meaning that the
property and building would be sold and leased back to the
business that is operating there: the hospital.

A representative from Grubb Ellis would not divulge
who listed it with them, although the listing says it is
being sold by a private group.

Daniel Kane, CEO of the Bayonne Medical Center, whose
principals, under the name HUMC Holdco LLC, are in
negotiations to buy the Hoboken hospital, declined to
comment when asked about the listing.

A spokesman for HUMC Holdco did not return calls to
comment.

Toni Tomarazzo, the chairwoman of the Hoboken Municipal
Hospital Authority, the group that oversees the city-owned
hospital, said it was not the authority, but HUMC Holdco who
listed the property.

Holdco, she said, was looking to the sale leaseback as a
“financing option” in order to make several
capital improvements to the hospital, such as a nursing home
and new obstetrics center.

Asked how HUMC Holdco could sell a property it did not yet
own, Tomarazzo said: “They’re not entering into a
contract. They’re simply looking into possibilities of
whether or not it’s a viable financing option. They
would not be permitted to enter into any kind of contract.
They don’t own the hospital. We do.”

The two parties have been in negotiations since early
January when the authority chose HUMC Holdco’s proposal
out of eight bids. The authority has said previously that
they are unable to release the names of the bidders or
provide the public with information on the quality of the
bids.

The authority put out a request for proposals in July,
hoping to privatize HUMC and relieve the city of a $52
million bond debt.

According to Tomarazzo, HUMC Holdco has vowed to keep the
medical center operating as a full-service acute care
facility for at least seven years as part of its proposal,
Tomarazzo said.

As for the leaseback, she added: “They’re
looking for opportunities to see what the best opportunity
is to bring capital into their deal, to do the kinds of
things we want to see for the hospital.”