As a Specialty Care Hospital Prepares to Close, Patients Wonder What’s Next

Michael Appleton for The New York Times The Goldwater campus of Coler-Goldwater Hospital, a rehabilitation facility on Roosevelt Island where many patients rely on wheelchairs. It is slated to close to make way for a new graduate school of technology.

Michael Appleton for The New York Times Tjader Fogle, 71, a paraplegic, is among the patients who have been transferred from the Goldwater building to the Coler building in anticipation of Goldwater’s closing.

Frantz Lys enjoys sitting by the water gazing across the East River toward the Manhattan skyline. For the past 21 years, Mr. Lys has been a patient at Coler-Goldwater Memorial Hospital, a specialty care hospital and nursing facility on Roosevelt Island that offers long-term rehabilitation.

Mr. Lys, 38, moved into Goldwater in 1992, after a car accident fractured his spinal cord and left him paralyzed below the neck. “Here on the island you can go out and not worry about cars in the streets,’’ he said. “It’s safe.”

Over the years Roosevelt Island has proved to be a sanctuary for many disabled people. Not only is Coler-Goldwater Hospital home to one of the state’s largest population of disabled people, but the island also has limited traffic and offers easy access by public transportation to Queens and Manhattan.

The hospital consists of two separate campuses - Goldwater on the southern end of the island and Coler on the northern end. Together, the facilities house 1065 patients, with about 320 living at Goldwater.

But soon Goldwater will have to be emptied because it is scheduled to close in December to make way for the construction of Cornell University’s new graduate school of technology. The closing has left many residents anxious, especially longtime residents who have relished their ability to move about their neighborhood with relative ease.

Over the last two years about 200 Goldwater patients have already moved to private homes.

Many remaining patients will move either to the Coler campus or to a facility expected to open soon in East Harlem named after Henry J. Carter, the founder and chairman of Wheelchair Charities, an organization that has been supporting Coler-Goldwater for decades.

“We have a sufficient number of beds between the Coler campus and the new facility, Henry J. Carter, to accommodate all of the remaining patients,” said Robert K. Hughes, executive director of Coler-Goldwater Hospital.

But Mr. Lys, who was moved to the Coler campus in September, said the transition had been difficult because he believes Goldwater is better equipped to meet the needs of patients in wheelchairs.

He has taken to spending more time outdoors since his relocation. “It’s a sort of a therapy for me,” he said. “It helps me release my frustration, helps me release my anger, my depression.”

Another patient, who was transferred to Coler in July after spending five years at Goldwater, shares Mr. Lys’s view. “Coler is not as handicapped-equipped,” said the patient, who asked not to be identified because he feared retribution from the hospital. “The bathrooms are small; it’s hard to get the wheelchair to the showers.”

Goldwater Hospital was built in 1939 on the site of a demolished prison and was designed to treat patients with chronic illnesses, mostly people with tuberculosis. Over the years, however, its focus shifted to long-term care for people with disabilities. Coler Hospital opened in 1952, and also provided care to disabled patients. The two facilities merged in the 1990s with a combined capacity of 2,000 patients.

The hospital offers a variety of recreation activities, including movies and bingo nights, as well as art and creative writing classes. The facility also has a gym, which helps patients with their rehabilitation, a church and even its own Subway sandwich restaurant.

Unlike the residents of many similar facilities, Coler-Goldwater patients are provided with motorized wheelchairs through a program sponsored by Wheelchair Charities.

“You can imagine if you go to another facility where they don’t have motorized wheelchairs, you’d be forced to stay in bed,’’ Mr. Lys said. “Especially for someone like me who can’t use a manual chair.”

Armand Xama, who became a paraplegic after a diving accident six years ago, lived in different facilities in Queens and on Staten Island before moving to Goldwater in 2011.

“I’ve been to other places and I know what it is not to be in Goldwater,’’ Mr. Xama, 31, said. “In Staten Island you couldn’t go out at all - it’s like going to prison yourself.”

Some Goldwater residents are set to be transferred to a low-cost development in East Harlem that, when it is completed next year, will have studio and one-bedroom apartments for disabled people.

Mr. Xama hopes that’s where he will end up so that then he can try to find a job. “I want to work because I want to feel that I’m doing something, that I’m fulfilled,” he said. “Being more active and in working condition, will keep me even healthier.”