PHILADELPHIA (NYTIMES) – A hospital with room for nearly 500 beds has been closed for months in the centre of Philadelphia, a city bracing for the spread of the coronavirus and a crush of sick patients.

But the facility will remain empty, city officials said, because they cannot accept the owner’s offer: Buy the hospital or lease it for almost US$1 million (S$1.43 million) a month, including utilities and other costs.

“We don’t have the need to own it nor the resources to buy it. So we are done and we are moving on,” Mayor Jim Kenney told reporters Thursday (March 26) during the city’s daily briefing.

The next day, he said that Temple University would let the city use a music and sports venue for free. The city would no longer pursue the closed facility, Hahnemann University Hospital.

The abrupt end of the dispute underscored the frantic search for more hospital beds as cities try to prepare for a crisis that is overwhelming medical facilities in New York, and highlighted the tensions between government officials and businesses in responding to the pandemic.

This week, the Trump administration backed away from announcing a US$1 billion deal with General Motors and Ventec Life Systems to produce ventilators, after officials said they needed more time to assess the estimated cost.

In Philadelphia, coronavirus infections are quickly rising. On Friday, the city health commissioner, Dr Thomas Farley, reported 154 new cases, for a total of 637 cases across every ZIP code of the city, and three deaths.

“This virus is everywhere in Philadelphia,” he said.

The owner of the hospital, Joel Freedman of Broad Street Healthcare Properties, a real estate company, said he had offered to sell the facility to the city well below market price, or to lease it for US$60 a bed a month, far less than what two other hospitals in California agreed to charge to lease their facilities.

“Anyone looking at the apples to apples comparison can see that Mr. Freedman not only desired to be helpful to the city of Philadelphia and its leaders, but he was very reasonable,” said Sam Singer, a spokesman for Freedman, who is based in Los Angeles. “We’re disappointed that they didn’t accept what we offered, but we stand ready to be helpful to the city or the state if they want to reopen discussions.”

Hahnemann Hospital, which once served the city’s poorest patients, closed in September 2019. The hospital had been suffering millions of dollars in losses a month, Freedman told The Philadelphia Business Journal last June.

“We relentlessly pursued numerous strategic options to keep Hahnemann in operation, and have been uncompromising in our commitment to our staff, patients and community,” Freedman said at the time. “We are faced with the heartbreaking reality that Hahnemann cannot continue to lose millions of dollars each month and remain in business.”

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