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Radius building, five acres of Rox land to be auctioned

Yawu Miller
Yawu Miller is the former senior editor of the Bay State Banner. He has written for the Banner since 1988.... VIEW BIO
Radius building, five acres of Rox land to be auctioned
The former Radius Specialty Hospital on Townsend Street is due to be sold at auction Aug. 13. Neighborhood residents say they want to see housing developed on the five-acre site.

A court-appointed receiver for the former Radius Hospital on Townsend Street is seeking bidders for an August 13 auction to sell the 159,000-square-foot facility and the five acres of prime Roxbury land on which it sits.

Possible uses for the site include a health care facility, a school, dormitory space or housing.

“It’s a great site,” said real estate broker Sharif Abdal Khallaq, who lives one block over on Elmore Street. “It has basically everything you need for housing.”

Further down Townsend Street, at the corner of Warren Street, the former Roxbury Comprehensive Community Health Center, also in receivership, was purchased recently by the Bridge Charter School.

Abdal Khallaq said it may be possible to repurpose the existing complex of attached buildings as housing. And with 4.96 acres of land, a developer also could tear down the existing buildings and construct a new housing complex.

Author: Source: Google EarthAn image of the Radius site from Google Earth shows the building complex and its parking lots. A rock ledge separates the hospital from the adjacent Academy Homes development.

Garrison Trotter Neighborhood Association Chairman Louis Elisa is in favor of a new housing development.

“It should be a planned urban development of mixed housing, with affordable and market-rate home ownership,” he said.

The Radius Hospital buildings and three adjoining parking lots are surrounded by housing, including the Academy Homes public housing development. Zoning for the area precludes commercial uses for the site.

While institutional uses, including group care facilities, also are a possibility, last November the administration of Mayor Martin Walsh angered abutters with a proposal to relocate drug treatment programs formerly housed at the now-closed Long Island shelter to the Radius building. The Walsh administration backed off that proposal in December.

Abutters say they remain opposed to drug treatment programs on the site.

“I would like to see housing there,” said real estate broker Radhy Pena, whose Townsend Street house is directly opposite the hospital building. “Definitely no rehab clinics.”

The court-appointed receiver, New York-based Keen Summit Capital Partners LLC, charged with auctioning off the property while Radius Hospital goes through bankruptcy proceedings, is currently seeking bidders for the property, according to Heather Milazzo, spokeswoman for the firm.

Bidders will be required to submit proof of their ability to complete the transaction by August 10. The pre-qualified bidders will then participate in the Aug. 13 auction.

Formerly the Jewish Memorial Hospital, the building complex was purchased by Radius in 2006. A spokesman for the company told the Boston Globe last year that the Roxbury facility had never been profitable. The 350 employees at both the Roxbury and Radius’s Quincy site were laid off in September of last year when the hospitals closed.