In scathing letter, Mayor Wu insists Steward site remains used for health care

In a scathing letter, Mayor Michelle Wu told the owners of Carney Hospital that she’d fight any attempts to redevelop the property for anything other than a health care site.

Stewart Health Care, which operates Carney, plans to shut down the health care facility by Aug. 31 as part of its bankruptcy proceedings. Stewart will also shutter Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer. Following that announcement, Wu joined other elected officials and protesters to oppose the hospitals’ closures.

In the letter, dated Aug. 1 and addressed to the CEOs of Carney co-owners Medical Properties Trust Inc. and Macquarie Infrastructure Partners, Wu said that she’d “oppose any effort by ownership to rezone the property for uses other than the provision of health care.”

“Our community is rightly concerned that your companies, not satisfied with the hundreds of millions in value already extracted from Steward hospitals, hope to capitalize on the closure of Carney Hospital by redeveloping the property,” she wrote. 

“Further, we will closely monitor proposals for the property to ensure compliance with all applicable processes — and to guarantee that the community’s voice is represented with respect to the future of Carney Hospital,” Wu wrote.

In the letter, Wu also told the landlords that they have no legal right to redevelop the property beyond its current zoning code as a multi-family residential zone. 

“This zoning supports maintaining the site as a hospital/health care facility due to how difficult it would be to accomplish a financially feasible alternative use that is compliant with the existing zoning, which only allows for residential housing with maximum building heights of 3 stories or 35 feet and a maximum floor area ratio (the ratio of gross floor area of a structure to the total area of the lot) of 1.0,” Wu wrote in the letter.

She said any zoning change would require review by multiple boards and commissions.

“And my administration will oppose any efforts by your representatives to secure one,” she wrote. 

Wu ended by saying the city would cooperate with any state and federal investigation of “illegal conduct by you and other entities involved in Steward’s collapse.”

“In the meantime, we wish to clearly communicate that, as to the hospital property, my Administration is opposed to any proposals that would allow you to take further advantage of this community,” Wu wrote. 

Carney Hospital specializes in mental health and psychiatric care. According to state officials, the facility had 30,000 visits last year. Rep. Ayanna Pressley said the hospital also provides psychiatric care for veterans and has one of the shortest ER wait times in Boston. EMS and emergency services transported more than 600 residents to Carney last year, according to Wu.