By Chris Maza
cmaza@thereminder.comWARE — Residents can hope for the best but should be bracing themselves for disappointment when it comes to the final outcome for the former Mary Lane hospital property.
That was the general message at a special meeting of the Historical Commission on July 22.
“Our irons are still in the fire, but we have to be realistic about where we are right now,” said Chair Lynn Caulfield Lak.
Noting the commission normally doesn’t meet in July, Lak pointed out that there were only two more scheduled meetings before the nine-month demolition delay on the campus, initially enacted in January, expires. As part of the demolition delay, the commission was tasked with assisting the owner of the properties with locating a developer to “preserve, rehabilitate or restore” the buildings at 85 and 89 South St. that had served as medical facilities for Ware and the surrounding communities for 100 years before Baystate Health opted to close the facility completely in 2023.
As had been reflected at previous meetings, Lak said attempts to find a suitor for the property that would maintain its status as a medical campus had been generally fruitless. In April, Commission member Claudia Kadra said 33 “large acute care providers” had been contacted as part of the effort to find a new operator for the medical campus and none expressed interest. With July more than half over, Lak indicated the situation had not changed much.
Lak also said a representative for HRT Architects, the firm contracted to assess the buildings’ suitability for reuse, was “trying to let me down easy” but prepared her for the reality that if someone was interested in the existing buildings, the likely best use was as office space. She opined that there would not be strong interest in that option.
“We have tried to find a developer who might be able to take care of the property and we have been unsuccessful so far,” she said. “I’m not saying there might [not] be a miracle route here — I hope there is somebody who shows up — but right now, we need to start thinking about whether or not we’re going to try to ask Baystate to help us gather some materials for memorializing the building.”
Addressing the idea of maintaining façades, commission member Elena Palladino, who is also Smith College’s secretary of the Toard of Trustees and secretary of the college, offering support and advise on institutional governance, said the college had attempted to maintain the brick façade of an old library and found the process difficult and expensive.
Lak also noted Cemetery Commission Chair Craig Simmons suggested that while there should be a marker at the South Street property, a memorial should be placed at the town-owned Aspen Grove Cemetery because of the number of people involved with the hospital buried there.
Palladino said she thought the memorial should be linked to the site, but the cemetery was a good secondary option given the fact the town doesn’t own the Mary Lane property.
Hospital Review Committee Chair Howard Trietsch told the commission about 100 community members attended a site design charette at which architects presented rough sketches of potential uses for the property, most of which involved multi-use development.
He noted in two of the potential designs, the Weatherby Building remained and there was the possibility that that was the only building that would be preserved, potentially as a children’s library or museum. He said those options could “maintain the historic legacy” and act as a “cornerstone of the development.” The rest of the development in those concepts included housing and medical care.
Trietsch said there are a couple of tours with potentially interested parties set to take place at the end of the month. While he expressed doubt that they would have interest in the property in its entirety but may be interested in being a partner in the redevelopment of the land.
“Hopefully something will come to fruition, but again, it will probably be in the context of mixed use redevelopment of all 22 acres,” he said. He noted he had not heard any indication that those touring the property had interest in reusing the Weatherby Building.
Hospital Review Committee member Cathy Cascio expressed concern with what she perceived as a rush to make decisions, pointing to the ongoing trust and deed issues.
“There’s a lot of balls in the air right now,” she said. “We keep going down to — not just you — to make decisions where there’s still a lot of answers that need to come forward.”
Selectman and Hospital Review Committee member Nancy Talbot reiterated there were limitations on what the town could do because the land was not municipally owned.
The commission agreed to hold off on making any decisions until after the visits had taken place.
Addressing concerns regarding what appears to be demolition occurring on the site, Building Commissioner Anna Marques explained the difference between Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection-sanctioned work and demolition approved by the town. She stressed the town has not issued any demolition permits. As a result, she explained, she can only go on-site with permission.
“[MassDEP’s] permits are not municipal permits; they are not under my purview at all,” she said. “There are no permits issued for demolition because all the buildings are under demo delay.”
She said one of the required items on the municipal demolition permit is asbestos removal. This means that prior to applying for a demolition permit from the town, the applicant would need to show documentation that it had completed MassDEP’s process for removing and abating the hazardous material. Marques said she allowed the asbestos abatement work to proceed, noting it was a town requirement instituted before her time. She clarified that that work was not technically demolition because it adheres to certain restrictions.
“Now, asbestos abatement, hazardous material removal, it cannot remove anything structural. In the newer buildings … the interior partition, the smaller walls up to the ceiling and not supporting the roof, would not be considered structural and that’s why that is allowed,” she said. “The Weatherby Building is a different kind of construction because it is older and it has load bearing walls inside the building.”
When asked about fire suppression systems, Marques said it was her understanding they were active and the Fire Department had recently reported an alarm from a building. She said that oversight falls to the Fire Department but she had contacted Baystate for information.
Asked about whether the roof was leaking, Marques said there was evidence of the roof leaking prior to the work. “As far as openings in the roof, I know there was a mechanical mezzanine that was removed and people were fearing that was a hole into he building, but that wasn’t the case at all … That’s where the asbestos abatement was done up there, that’s why that was opened up. For that I did go out and visually see it [and] had a discussion with a representative of Baystate on-site and got a full explanation of why that had happened,” she said.
Historic Commission member Wanda Mysona also stressed that visible work at the site had been “legitimate” and was not demolition. That work included Verizon removing telecommunication towers and infrastructure and Baystate Health relocating medical equipment.
“The hospital radiology department only closed in December, so January, February, they were coming in and taking out their X-ray machines and all of that,” she said. “People were very nervous that demolition was occurring when, in reality, it was not. The structure was not being demolished.”
