FinCom hesitant about Town taking Hospital

The Norwood Finance Commission (FinCom) met last week and discussed Article 3 for the upcoming May Special Town Meeting.

The article appropriates about $300,000 for the Town to look into different ways of taking the Norwood Hospital by eminent domain. The strategy, according to Board of Selectmen members, is to help motivate the current property owner, Medical Properties Trust (MPT), to sell the property.

The shell of the hospital is basically completed, as well as the parking garage, but no operator or new owner has been found. According to officials, there have been several interested parties in Massachusetts for the property, but MPT has not budged on a sale.

“What is their intent?” said FinCom member Kellie Noumi asked. “Like, they have this large piece of property that they’re paying a bunch of money on, right? And it’s bringing in no revenue.”

Selectman Matt Lane said he suspected that the hospital represents a very small fraction of MPT’s portfolio.

“And so it’s not affecting as much as a sole entity might be,” he said.

“So it’s just a loss leader they have?” Noumi said.

“I would assume,” Lane said.

According to the MPT website – https://gvimes.link/mptportfolio – the company has 378 properties worldwide, purported to be worth $14.8 billion.

“That’s the best we can say really, that it hasn’t affected them to the point that they’d be forced to sell to a low bidder or to whomever,” Lane said. “Which I think is the impetus for our action, to sort of make something happen, because otherwise, if they just sit there forever, that’s obviously not what we want.”

Noumi said while she supported getting the hospital back, the Town taking over a brand new medical facility, purportedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars, is a liability.

“It’s hugely important and something that I’m very passionate about getting back up and running – obviously for my demographic (I have two kids) and we have a lot of seniors here – which makes it a public safety issue,” she said. “However, I really have a problem with starting to talk about using eminent domain to take a medical facility, which we have no business running. Most hospitals are unprofitable, and even setting up the language for that is concerning for me, because I don’t think that would be an appropriate action for us.”

There is a parallel piece of legislation going through the Massachusetts State House from State Rep. John Rogers and State Sen. Michael Rush for the state to take the hospital by eminent domain. FinCom Chair Eric Fleming said it hasn’t moved much since going to committee. According to Billtrack.com – https://gvimes.link/hospitalbill – there has been no movement legislatively since March 5.

“I’m not sure the state even wants to take it either,” he said. “I think ideally someone just comes in and buys it. The problem is we have a property owner that, perhaps, doesn’t want to sell, at least for a reasonable price. So you got a stalemate. I think the intent in both cases is to demonstrate we’re serious. We don’t want this to linger, and I also expressed concern to (Town Manager Tony Mazzucco) that I don’t want the Town to have the chain of title for the property.”

Fleming said the idea is to help force the issue. FinCom member Myev Bodenhofer said one advantage of this is that it will clear the title. The state passed similar legislation for St. Elizabeth’s Hospital before handing it over to the Boston Medical Center, as one of the owners – Apollo – was holding up the sale of the hospital.

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“I don’t know what the legal issues might be but I think it’s possible that there might be legal advantages to do a taking even if that’s not our intent,” she said.

Noumi said she’s worried that a buyer might back out after the Town has taken the property, and that the Town would be stuck trying to sell real estate – again (the Town bought the Forbes Mansion property in 2017 to keep a 40B development from going in there for about $13 million, and then, luckily, sold it to Moderna for $23 million at the height of the pandemic).

“I would suspect – but I have no idea how the process is going to turn out – if we were willing to take this by eminent domain, somehow there was somebody lined up to buy the hospital,” said FinCom Vice Chair Alan Slater. “Once you do eminent domain, you own title of the property but you also owe damages to the previous owner of the property. So unless we have somebody lined up, I don’t think we could fiscally sustain that.”

Slater said this Town Meeting Article for $300,000 will allow the Town to be in a good position to start the eminent domain process if it comes to that. Mazzucco has said in the past that it’s basically doing the leg work beforehand, so that if this is something the Town takes on, it won’t be held up too long.

Even if an operator is found tomorrow, it will still take about 18 months for them to outfit the hospital shell with the equipment they need to provide medical services.

For more information, go to FinishTheJobNorwood.com