Calling All Bordenites and Preservationists!

We need your help.

Southcoast Hospital Group’s Charlton Hospital, located at the top of French Street, and just two doors away from Maplecroft, is planning to demolish a neighborhood block to put in a flat top parking lot. The eight houses they have slated for the parking lot are located on the south side of the hospital complex and includes one owned by Alice Russell.

This call to you is not about saving Alice’s house, but to save a neighborhood that includes Alice’s house.

We are asking that you send us letters to present to the Trustees of the hospital group next week. We would like you to send those letters to us at P.O. Box 9585, Fall River, MA, 02720. Please write your letters soon. And mail them to us as soon as you can. You can send your letters by email if you wish to [email protected]. DO NOT use WPS format. We can accept TXT, PDF, RTF, DOC, and DOCX attachments. Don’t forget to include your name and address!

Please address your own outrage over the destruction of this neighborhood, the loss of historical structures, and the planned use as a parking lot. If your issue is Fall River preservation in general, please comment. Feel free to pull parts of the press release below and work from those words to craft your letters.

Here is the press release from Save Our Neighborhoods, which offers further detail about the story:

Save Our Neighborhoods

Concerned Citizens of Fall River for Neighborhood Conservation

P.O.Box 1005, Fall River, MA 02722
(917) 363-5393 (508) 672-8217

News Release
For Immediate Release

Contact: Alfred J. Lima (508) 672-8217

Save Our Neighborhoods opposes Charlton’s destruction of a neighborhood.

Fall River; March 27: Save Our Neighborhoods strenuously objects to the planned destruction of eight dwellings by Charlton Memorial Hospital for the purposes of creating a parking lot. This is an unacceptable expansion into a stable neighborhood by the hospital. It will negatively impact the quality of life of neighborhood residents and will lower the property values of the homes that will be across the street from the lot. It is also a dangerous precedent that opens the way for more demolitions in the future.

Save Our Neighborhoods met with representatives of Southcoast Hospitals in January after learning of their acquisition of two properties on the block. We subsequently sent a letter to the administrator asking to meet with the board and offering to discuss the issue privately; we had no wish to embarrass Charlton Hospital in public. The hospital’s reply was to say “no, thanks” and to announce the destruction of the eight houses in the March 25th edition of the Herald News.

When Union and Truesdale Hospitals merged about 30 years ago and consolidated on the Union site, the neighborhood surrounding the hospital was ravaged by the expansion of the hospital. Once viable neighborhoods were turned into parking lots. About 15 years ago, an attempt by Charlton to destroy the brick Ruskinian Gothic Sarah Brayton House at 484 Highland Avenue resulted in a very unpleasant confrontation with the community, the result of which was a commitment by the hospital that it would stay within its boundaries. That commitment no longer seems to be operative.

The position of Save Our Neighborhoods is that institutions in Fall River need to solve their parking and other needs without damaging the integrity of the neighborhoods that surround them. Their problem should not become our problem. The location of non-profit or commercial uses in residential neighborhoods should not adversely affect the quality of life or the property values of surrounding residential dwellings.

Being a good neighbor includes consulting with the community when an expansion into a neighborhood is contemplated. No such consultation has occurred. Southcoast Hospitals has chosen to purchase these properties in secret, intending, we presume, to present the community with an accomplished fact. The historic Smith Manufacturing Co. rope factory building on Hillside Street— abutting the eight buildings planned for demolition—was recently demolished by Charlton.

We want to make it clear that the eight home demolitions will be replaced by a parking lot, not the cancer center. The cancer center will abut the current hospital buildings.

The parking lot that will result from demolishing the eight homes will accommodate only 90 vehicles. However, a total of 216 new parking spaces could be accommodated on the existing abutting lot with a simple two-level parking deck. These demolitions are unnecessary. More than enough parking for the cancer center can be accommodated with a parking structure on the existing lot. Unfortunately for the abutters, it appears to be cheaper to destroy a neighborhood than to build a parking deck.

There will be those who say, “Charlton needs the room to expand; they are, after all, the city’s largest employer, and it’s only eight houses that will be demolished.” First, the issue here is not whether Charlton can expand; it will expand and accommodate the cancer center on its main lot. All that is at issue here is parking, and whether it should be a surface lot or a parking deck.

The second issue is “only eight houses.” Neighborhoods are rarely destroyed wholesale; it happens incrementally. Eight houses today will become more houses tomorrow, as the hospital’s insatiable demand for parking grows. These houses are also part of the city’s history as much as any other historic structures. This neighborhood has a history and that history shouldn’t become a parking lot.

There is also the issue of fairness. The residents of Linden and Hillside Street have every right to expect that their quality of life and property values will be protected. No major institution in the city should have the unilateral power to take that away.

Save Our Neighborhoods has put Charlton on notice that any attempt to demolish any of the eight buildings will be met with on-site demonstrations and a protracted public confrontation. The hospital’s “take it or leave it” position has left us with no alternative. We will be monitoring applications for demolition permits in the City Building Department and will respond accordingly.

The integrity of this neighborhood must be preserved. The only way to accomplish that is for Southcoast Hospitals to sell these eight dwellings back into residential use. That is the position of Save Our Neighborhoods, and that is what we demand. We will not move from that position under any circumstances.

We wish to make it very clear that Save Our Neighborhoods did not start this conflict. It was Charlton’s decision to destroy this neighborhood. Fall River’s neighborhoods do not ask for much: all we want and all we need is to be left alone.

Southcoast Hospitals started this confrontation, and it is in their hands to end it.