Firm Bids $3.7 Million for Belleville's SoHo Property

A New York developer that has worked with older medical sites submitted the high bid for the SoHo property in Belleville, The Star Ledger reported.

Alma Realty of Astoria, Queens offered $3.7 million for the sprawling site Dec. 21, the paper reported.

The massive, 200,000-square-foot facilty, located at the corner of Belleville and Franklin avenues across from School 10, belongs to Essex County. For decades it served as an isolation hospital and then as a geriatric facility before becoming home to the Garden State Cancer Center in the mid-1990s.

Late last year the Board of Freeholders decided to auction off the property after the cancer center defaulted on a county loan and left the site in 2011. The county later foreclosed on the property.

Trespassers have entered the building in the past and there have been at least two fires at the property in the last several months, most recently in December. Both blazes were deemed suspicious.

The sale will not be finalized until public meetings are held in Newark and Belleville. The board of freeholders must also vote to sell off the site.