Neighbors balk at health center
(Correction: Due to incorrect information provided to the Globe, a story in the Jan. 29 edition of Globe North misstated how much money the North Shore Medical Center lost between Oct. 1, 2004, and Sept. 30, 2005. The correct figure is $26 million.
Past the Liberty Tree Mall, Burger King,
''Vote No," reads the placard along Marie Plankey's fence, located directly across from the Osram Sylvania plant in Danvers. Another sign reads, ''North Shore Medical Center -- Thanks, but no thanks."
These handmade signs were hung along the street by residents who oppose North Shore Medical Center and Massachusetts General Hospital's attempt to convert part of the plant into a $108 million ambulatory care center and cancer center. North Shore and MGH are members of the Partners HealthCare System.
Tomorrow night, Town Meeting voters will decide the fate of the proposal, which requires a zoning change that would allow a healthcare facility to be built on property zoned for industrial use. The change would need two-thirds approval from Town Meeting members. On Jan. 10, the Danvers Planning Board endorsed the proposal.
Inside Plankey's 196-year-old home, papers and historical texts about the Danversport neighborhood are spread across her kitchen table. Plankey, along with neighbor Ann Marie Ruotolo, say that the proposed project is wrong for a street that already faces heavy traffic at least once a day.
According to Evan Belansky, a senior planner at Town Hall, 16,000 cars travel along Endicott Street each weekday. With nine traffic lights and entrances and exits to Route 128, the 1.2-mile road has also tallied the third most accidents in town over the last two years, according to the Police Department, with 220 accidents reported between Jan 1, 2004, and Jan. 15 of this year.
Plankey said voters should demand traffic and environmental impact studies from the medical center before the project is brought before voters. ''My concern is they didn't do their homework. We don't know what the impact of a healthcare facility will be on this area," said Plankey.
Added Ruotolo, ''It will destroy the neighborhood because of the huge amount of traffic it will bring."
Robert Norton, president and chief executive officer of North Shore Medical Center, acknowledged that no detailed traffic or environmental study has been conducted for the proposal, but said a traffic study would be required if voters endorse the zoning change.
''We will work with the town and the neighbors to do the traffic studies that are required and do anything we can to ameliorate the impact that the new project may have to the area, including supporting new traffic lights and improvements to the road," said Norton. ''Our absolute intention is to be great neighbors."
Norton said North Shore Medical Center and MGH signed a letter of agreement with Nordic Properties to purchase the 50-acre site where Osram is located. Norton declined to name the proposed purchase price, but said the total investment in the property would be $108 million. That would include 165,000 square feet for an ambulatory center in which day surgery, diagnostic imaging, and cardiac testing would occur. Norton said Osram would continue to use the remaining space in the 307,000-square-foot building, and also renovate and build onto the existing structure.
Norton said the site would not become an inpatient hospital or an emergency treatment center, and would be open weekdays from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. He said the nonprofit facility would pay the town $250,000 a year -- the same amount the town receives in taxes from its current owner, Nordic Properties.
Also, if the ambulatory center is built, North Shore Medical Center's cancer center would move from Peabody to the Danvers site. The current 40,000-square-foot Peabody site would be reconfigured to better serve patients, said North Shore Medical Center spokeswoman Pam Lawrence. Lawrence said the new center would total 45,000 square feet, and add a fourth radiation therapy machine for patients.
If approved, the facility would be the second ambulatory care center planned for the town. Last month, Beverly Hospital announced that it would spend up to $20 million to build a healthcare center on a 7-acre strip of land at the former Danvers State Hospital, which would also include an oncology suite. Because the property is already zoned for a hospital, no zoning changes are required.
Norton said the prospective site was chosen because of its access to Route 128, located less than a half-mile from the property. With outpatient services at North Shore Medical Center expected to increase by 15 percent in the next decade, the facility would bring ''a new level of care" to patients, said Norton. He said it would also help the facility's bottom line. From Oct. 1, 2004, to Sept. 30, 2005, North Shore Medical Center lost $24 million.
''The growth that's projected in healthcare is ambulatory growth as opposed to inpatient care," said Norton.
But Ruotolo and other neighbors are wary of any new proposals for the area, and fear that their neighborhoods will be swallowed up by businesses. Ruotolo, who lives on the same street her parents and grandparents once lived on, said retail development since the early 1970s has changed the look of the community.
''Nobody has come up with any plans to protect the neighborhoods," she said.
Julie Hines, who has lived in the same house on Needham Road since 1970, said any new facility would bring more stress into her life. Hines lives within a five-minute walk of the Osram site.
''We don't want any more building here," said Hines, who did most of her Christmas shopping online despite living less than a mile from the Liberty Tree Mall. ''We don't even leave our house from Thanksgiving to Christmas, or we'll be stuck in traffic."
