greystone park psychiatric hospital

State to auction off old Greystone complex

Move to new hospital will leave 130 acres and buildings unused

 

By Lawrence Ragonese

March 18, 2008 - Star Ledger

 

The state plans to auction off the old Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital, hoping to take bids this spring on the massive 132-year-old stone structure in Parsippany that soon will be totally abandoned.

The land and structures now owned by the state Department of Human Services will be declared surplus when a new hospital opens next month on the northern part of the 700-acre Greystone campus, officials said. In addition to the historic hospital, the state will auction the 1950s-era Abell complex and a series of smaller buildings.

State House Commission Secretary Sam Crane said selling the al most half-million-square-foot, asbestos-laden building might be difficult.

"No doubt, there is some chal lenge to this," Crane said. "But the process the state is using is smart. Go into the marketplace and see what possibilities there are, see what is offered. People always say government should run like a business, and that's just what we're doing here."

No minimum bid price has been established and no date set for the auction, state officials said.

The State House Commission -- which includes representatives of the governor, state treasurer and legislature -- last week approved the auction of 130 surplus acres and buildings at Greystone, including the hospital that dates to 1876.

The state Treasury Department, in a notice sent in January to Parsippany Mayor Michael Luther, suggested the "highest and best uses" for the excess Greystone property and structures would be residential development and open space. The land is zoned rural residential, a town official said.

The original Greystone is a stone behemoth that dates to the post-Civil War era. It opened in 1876 to take in 292 former Union soldiers for what was then billed as state-of-the-art mental health care. Over the next century, Greystone grew into what was essentially one of Morris County's largest towns, with more than 7,000 patients and thousands of employees.

 

Today, fewer than 500 patients are housed in a few buildings on a sprawling campus that until recently was littered with abandoned buildings. About 300 of the acres were sold to Morris County in 2001 for $1. The county has spent $8 million on property cleanup and demolitions as first steps in creating a new county park.

Just a short distance from the county property, the original Greystone sits mostly empty. A small central core houses the hospital administration. The rest of the building is a maze of hallways and rooms with peeling plaster and paint. It is on Morris County's top 10 list of endangered historic sites.

In April, when the new 450-bed hospital opens, the original struc ture will be totally empty. The state has no plans for it.

Representatives of Morris County, Parsippany, Morris Plains and Morris Township, who have interest in acquiring small pieces of the surplus Greystone land, have scheduled a meeting with treasury officials on Monday.

"We need more information on the potential impact of a sale," Luther said.

Meanwhile, a small group of Morris County and Parsippany officials and historians have formed a committee to consider preservation of the structure.

"You walk into this building and you can see it is so obvious that it should be preserved," said Randy Tortorello, chairman of the Parsip pany Historical and Preservation Society, during a tour of the struc ture. "We know it needs to be done. But it's so big."

 

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