SHAC meeting re MSH site

The State Hospital Advisory Committee (SHAC) met 12-5-2013, and Jim Rohnstock authored excellent meeting notes of what transpired.

In my mind the big unresolved issues are –

• TIMING:  The timing of the special town meeting (STM) to take up whether the town will want o pursue the purchase of the Medfield State Hospital site.  All agree that consideration should happen before the Patrick administration leaves office in January 2015, and if that is to happen the required legislation will need happen before the legislature dissolves for elections next year, which may be during the summer.  The timing of the legislative calendar will therefore control the timing of our municipal consideration of and voting on the purchase.  The town will just have to back out the timing as to when the special town meeting (STM) will have to occur to meet the legislature’s schedule.  Inquiries will be made to determine the legislature’s timing, and then we can set our schedule.  My recollection the last time we dealt with the legislature over getting legislation for the Medfield State Hospital was that the legislature stopped meeting for the year in July, but we will learn more soon.
• ULTIMATE USES:  Given the need to schedule an early special town meeting (STM) to consider the Medfield State Hospital land purchase, the town will probably not have sufficient time to engage in a completed discussion of what ultimate uses it wants to make of the site.  That we require us to decide whether we as a town want to buy the site, before we have a concrete plan in hand as to what we will do with the land after any purchase.  I hope that by the special town meeting (STM) on the purchase, that we will at least have general consensus and agreement on the broad concepts of what the town will do with the land, such as a consensus that the town will seek to partner with developers to build certain sorts of things on the land versus leaving the site as open space.  Even if there is building and development at the site, there will still be lots of open space left for residents to use, just as it is now available to us.
• DEMOLITION:  Dealing with the decrepit buildings at the site will be a major issue.  I have come to be convinced that it is unlikely that the vast majority of the buildings can be saved for new uses given the exceedingly high cost to do so.  One can rehab any structure, but the question is at what price, and the dilapidated condition of most of the Medfield State Hospital buildings combined with the requirements of the current building codes means that any reuse of those dilapidated buildings will cost lots and lots of money, monies that the town would then have to be willing to pay.  While I personally like a lot the look of the buildings and the their placement on the site, and while I started from a position of wanting to save the buildings, I have since learned the high price to rehab such buildings, and I am now not willing to pay the lots of extra costs needed to salvage them.  Economic realities have made me a reluctant convert to the need to demolish most of the buildings at the Medfield State Hospital site.   There was some discussion of demolition costs at the meeting last week, with the following information imparted:  (1) someone related an expert opining to him that it would cost $5.5 m. to demolish all the builds (without accounting for the abatement costs), (2) experts related general demolition costs of $10-15 per sq. ft. plus $10 per sq. ft. for the abatement, (3) Foxborough State Hospital’s demolition cost $15 per sq. ft. (not at prevailing wage), and (4) DCAMM stated that on average, paying prevailing wages, that it pays $16 per sq. ft., all in (including abatement), to demolish buildings.  There are approximately 600,000 sq. ft. of buildings at the Medfield State Hospital site, so in a worst case scenario, using the DCAMM $16 per sq. ft. number, it would cost the town about $9-10 m. to demolish all the MSH buildings if the town did the demolition.  Everyone seems to agree that at the very least that the Lee Chapel building should be saved.  I am hopeful that the R building and the other building in front of the R building that were most recently rehabbed can be saved as well.  If the town decided on some development at the site, the logical thing would be to have the developer do the demolition, as they would not have to pay prevailing wages, and hence the cost would be substantially less (perhaps on the order of one-third to half less).
• HISTORIC BUILDINGS:  The site is listed on the National Register of historic properties.  There do not yet appear to be precise answers as to just what the Massachusetts Historic Commission (MHC) will and will not allow with respect to demolition, but we do know that they recently reversed themselves to allow the requested demolition of the Odyssey House to proceed.  The MHC will also probably look to see what the Medfield Historic Commission says it wants done at the site in turns of saving versus demolishing the buildings.  To date, members of our own Historic Commission have opined towards saving as many of the buildings as possible.    The SHAC survey of the condition of four representative building will hopefully give us good data on whether the buildings can be saved and if so at what cost.

Residents should weigh in soon with their opinions about the Medfield State Hospital land on the survey SHAC has posted at its website, as the survey will probably be closed before the end of the year.  Find the survey and the SHAC’s other information at the committee’s website www.MSHvision.net.