Could an outpatient facility step into the vacant Capital One building?
With the number of cases rising and limited psychiatry services available for local children, a Southold Town committee tasked with driving economic development hopes to attract a nonprofit outpatient pediatric psychiatric facility to the North Fork.
The volunteer members of the town’s economic development committee met last month to discuss how the Southold Local Development Corporation, a public authority established to foster job growth in town, can bring in new businesses. In the case of nonprofit organizations, the corporation is empowered to offer financial assistance, including low-cost tax-exempt bonds.
The idea of exploring the feasibility of an outpatient pediatric psychiatric facility, among other health care services, arose as committee members discussed ways the town could attract enterprises that simultaneously offer high-paying jobs and meet identified community needs.
Southold Town Police Chief Martin Flatley said the town responded to a total of 49 psychiatric calls in 2000. That number, which includes many calls involving minors, rose to 81 in 2014.
While those numbers reflect a need for psychiatric care among people of all ages, the chief described the need among local children as “critical.”
“Emergency calls for children, like suicide attempts, are automatically taken to Stony Brook Hospital,” he said. “They’re released in a couple of days and when they come home there’s no real aftercare facility available [here].”
Karen Malcomson, program director at North Fork Counseling Service in Mattituck, said Stony Brook Medical Center currently contacts her office when a child from Southold Town is admitted for psychiatric services. The office follows up with each patient within five days of their return home.
The nonprofit counseling center has provides mental health services to children and families in the community. The center has 14 social workers and three psychiatric nurse practitioners. In addition, there’s a part-time psychiatrist, children and youth mobile team to visit youth in their homes when they don’t have transportation and a co-location. Of nearly 550 clients, Dr. Malcomson said, over 200 are children. In the past six months, the company hired five new staff members to focus on programs for young patients.
“The need is greater than we can fill,” she said of pediatric psychiatric services. “It would be nice not to have to send children to Stony Brook every time. If there was a way to evaluate the children here, that would be wonderful for the families.”
Several economic development committee members identified the 7,500-square-foot former Capital One headquarters on Main Road in Mattituck as a prime location for such a facility.
The building, which has been vacant since 2012, is owned by 9025 Main Road LLC, headed by Alan Cardinale of Mattituck. He did not return phone calls seeking comment for this story.
The company purchased the property for just under $1.1 million in September 2014. It’s the second time Mr. Cardinale has owned the building, which he also bought in 1982 when it was a supermarket. Two years later, he sold it to North Fork Bancorp. The building operated as North Fork Bank’s corporate headquarters until 2006, when Capital One purchased the bank and its properties. Capital One announced in September 2011 that it had begun the process of closing the headquarters.
Tax records give the property a market value of about $6.8 million and an assessed value of $75,000.
Exactly what Mr. Cardinale will do with the parcel has been on the minds of town officials since he reacquired it.
In 1984, Mr. Cardinale had the town impose a restriction preventing subsequent owners of the building from using it for anything except professional offices, such as banks, law practices, insurance brokerages and medical providers. Now that he’s the owner once again, he could lift that restriction and restore the building’s availability as retail space.
However, Southold Supervisor Scott Russell said in an interview this week that he’s had several conversations with Mr. Cardinale and described his vision for the property as matching the town’s. Both parties, he said, wish to see it remain professional office space.
“I reached out to Alan and he’s made a deep commitment to working with the town to make sure we get the type of tenants we’d like to see,” Mr. Russell said.
When asked if Southold would consider purchasing the property, the supervisor said the town is in no position to do so.
“We have enough assets,” he said. “It’s a big building and even if we’re successful getting a mental health care outpatient facility there, it’s not going to take up that whole building.”
Mr. Cardinale’s daughter, Donielle, a Mattituck realtor and a member of the economic development committee, described the recent discussions about the building’s future as a good start.
“Whether it’s that location or any other in Southold Town, our job in the economic development committee is to figure out how we can help people live productively in a way that supports our economy and the community,” she said. The biggest challenge with the former Capital One building, she added, is finding tenants with a “common theme,” so they complement each other.
She said she and her family, which has lived on the North Fork for five generations, do not want the property to remain vacant and will “wait for the right thing to come.”
“Until you explore something fully, sometimes there are great ideas that we would all love to see happen, but what it takes to bring those to fruition might not be practical, financially feasible or we might not have the resources,” she said.
Mr. Russell, who as supervisor serves as a liaison to the economic development committee, said that although he believes a medical facility would be a good use for the property — and would both meet a community need and create high-paying jobs — he agreed such an arrangement could be challenging.
“The need for a mental health outpatient facility for children is one thing,” he said. “Whether we can locate it in that building is something else … We’re trying to fill a building up and at the same time trying to identify community needs. Hopefully we can bring the two together, but that’s not always going to be the case.”
Mr. Russell said several community groups have reached out to him to collaborate on establishing mental health services for children and he plans to organize a meeting with various stakeholders to brainstorm solutions.
Expanded medical services for the North Fork are already on the horizon, thanks to the partnership agreement reached this summer between Eastern Long Island Hospital and Stony Brook University Medical Center.
Hospital CEO and president Paul Connor said the new partner organizations have been discussing the types of services they’d like to establish in Southold Town.
In particular, he said, they’ve talked about collaborating on outpatient psychiatric services.
“Rather than everyone having to travel to Stony Brook, we’ve been looking at ways to bring the care out to the folks on the East End,” Mr. Connor said. “The takeaway here is the relationship with Stony Brook is to bring services to ELIH that don’t exist here.”
Laura Jens-Smith, project coordinator for the North Fork Alliance and president of the Mattituck school board, agreed that more mental health services, as well as coordinated aftercare, are needed locally.
When asked for comment on the former bank as a potential site, Ms. Jens-Smith said it would be “wonderful” to have an outpatient pediatric psychiatric facility available locally.
“Sometimes the schools aren’t notified when a student has been hospitalized or released,” she said. “When they’re thrown back into their daily lives, they can’t handle it and don’t do well.”
Editor’s note: North Fork Counseling Service confirmed Thursday the information about the center’s staff provided to The Suffolk Times was incorrect. The company has 14 social workers and three psychiatric nurse practitioners. In addition, there’s a part-time psychiatrist, children and youth mobile team to visit youth in their homes when they don’t have transportation and a co-location.