Roxbury residents are petitioning a judge to stop the planned auction of the former Radius Hospital and require an open and transparent bidding process.
The move comes in advance of the court-appointed receiver’s planned Aug. 13 auction of the five-acre site on Townsend Street.
“On his own, the receiver hasn’t made any effort to reach out to the community,” said Garrison Trotter Neighborhood Association Chairman Louis Elisa, who is circulating a petition to Roxbury residents that he then will turn over to the bankruptcy court judge in charge of the Radius auction. So far, Roxbury residents have only heard from one bidder, New Atlantic Development principal Peter Roth, who met with a sizeable group of community members at the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church last week. The bidding process outlined by the receiver — New York-based Keen Summit Capital Partners — called for prospective buyers to submit bids by Monday, Aug. 10. Keen Summit then would invite approved bidders to an auction scheduled for Thurs., Aug. 13.
Elisa said Garrison Trotter wants the auction rescheduled.
“We want to know who’s bidding,” he said. “We want them to know that we’re concerned. They need to know we’re a part of the process.”
With 159,000 square feet of space and 4.96 acres of land, the Radius Hospital site triggers the city’s Article 80 process, which mandates that developments of more than 150,000 square feet undergo a community review process. Elisa said letting developers know what the community’s concerns are beforehand will make the process run more smoothly.
“We don’t want to be behind the bus on this,” he said. “We’re being proactive.”
Author: Screen capture from Google EarthThe Radius Hospital site includes several buildings, parking lots and a rock ledge.
One developer presents
At the meeting last Thursday, organized by Townsend Street resident Jed Hresko, 41 Roxbury residents crowded into the basement meeting room at the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church. Roth explained his plans for the site, should he win the bid.
He initially proposed a mixed-income housing development and said he would keep most of the existing structures, which “appear to be solid and of value.”
Roth said he was open to redoing some of the building facades.
Several residents suggested elderly housing.
“There’s a lot of building going on around in Roxbury, in Boston as it is, with a lot of housing for middle income or for whatever you want to call it,” one Townsend Street resident said. “Very little of any of that building is for senior citizens. And they’re actually trying to push us out of those nice homes as it is, because people want to take over those places and turn them into condos, or whatever it is they want to do with them.”
Roth said he would be open to elderly and assisted living housing on the site, and pointed out that his firm developed an assisted living facility at 25 Ruggles Street in the Dudley Square area.
Much of the discussion at the meeting revolved around residents’ plans to petition for a more open bidding process. Meeting participants agreed to create a task force, which then met to draft a modification of the court order.
“All we’re asking for is disclosure,” said Hresko. “We want to know what the process is, we’d like to know who the bidders are, we’d like to know what their criteria are.”
As for the court’s role, he continued, “The judge could say [our] standing comes in during the Article 80 process. We have a permitting process and a BRA. … I think they would argue that Article 80 of the BRA is [our] sort of lever. But we kept using the word disclosure. A judge could also say, ‘What’s the harm? It’s just disclosure.’”
