With the ink barely dry on its plan to emerge from bankruptcy, a Brooklyn community hospital is trying to reinvent itself in the midst of a gentrifying neighborhood.

Situated in the heart of Fort Greene, the Brooklyn Hospital Center is banking on an explosion of residential development nearby, including a new condominium building one block away. In addition to facility improvements and other upgrades, the hospital is poised to launch an advertising campaign early next year in an attempt to attract new patients.

“We are trying to change the image of the hospital,” the hospital’s president and CEO, Samuel Lehrfeld, said during a recent interview in his office. “People shouldn’t have to cross a bridge to get good care.”

The 464-bed Brooklyn hospital emerged from bankruptcy in September, two years after filing for Chapter 11 protection and having spent more than $13 million in legal fees. In doing so, it settled $272 million in debt, including $170 million it owed to vendors. The hospital also sold its Caledonian health building, on Parkside Avenue, for $15.6 million, according to a lawyer for the hospital, Lawrence Handelsman.

With its finances stable for the first time in years, the hospital is implementing a five-year reorganization plan that includes $40 million in capital improvements to a facility patients said was sorely in need of a face-lift.

It is also investing in new equipment, including two new cardiac catheterization laboratories, a bone density scanner, and a $1.5 million 64-slice CT scanner that is being paid for by the City Council and the Brooklyn borough president’s office, the hospital said.

“We are slowly fixing up the place,” Mr. Lehrfeld said. “We know what we need to invest in.” Mr. Lehrfeld also said he hopes to implement an electronic medical record system and to hire additional doctors.

At the crux of the plan is an attempt to increase the hospital’s patient base by tapping into residents of new developments in Fort Greene and Downtown Brooklyn. Indeed, one block away from the hospital, the 30-story Forté Condo was recently completed, and developers said the first residents would move in next month. Within blocks, the 1920s-era building at One Hanson Place — the old Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower — is also being renovated into luxury residences that will be completed by early 2008, and construction is under way at the 40-story Oro condominium building at 305 Gold Street.

“All those people will need access to health care,” the chairman of the hospital’s board of trustees, Jonathan Weld, said.

Mr. Weld said the hospital, with an operating budget of $300 million this year, would still emphasize outpatient clinical services and preventive medicine, but it would focus on new programs such as cardiac services, weight management, and back pain. “It’s partly business, it’s partly need, and partly the result of technology,” he said, describing the changes.

Still, the plan faces several challenges, not the least of which is convincing residents of the neighborhood’s new condos that it offers the kind of high-quality health care they are used to. Mr. Lehrfeld said that while cancer patients may be better off at a cancer center, his hospital could compete in other areas.

This attitude has prompted some concern among those who said they hoped the hospital would not abandon its Medicaid and Medicare patients, who currently make up 80% of the hospital’s patient base, according to the hospital.

“Increasing services to more people is a great goal as long as the byproduct is not disenfranchising needier populations,” the executive director of the Greater Southern Brooklyn Health Coalition, Kimberly George, said.

Among those who support the hospital’s new objectives, several said the community needs better access to basic health care. “I think there’s a pretty big consensus that what we really need to expand is the primary and preventive care for those communities,” the executive director of the Primary Care Development Corporation, Ronda Kotelchuck, said.

More recently, another challenge has emerged, as real estate insiders said new condo units are proving harder to sell than anticipated.

Mr. Lehrfeld dismissed the notion that the influx of residents may fall short of projections. “We are not concerned because the hospital has been here for so many years,” he said. However, he said the hospital could sell the parking lot adjacent to it on DeKalb Avenue if the current reorganization plan falls short of its goals. “We have a five-year window to sell the property or to develop it,” he said.