Recently, there have been questions about what is going to happen to the former Malden Hospital on Savin Street. Shut down and abandoned for nearly fifteen years, the building has held a lot of space in the west end.
I got a notice in the mail a couple weeks ago, saying that there was going to be a meeting about the hospital. I was interested in the fact of what they planned on making the space.
It has been discussed that the building would be taken down and made into apartments or condominiums. However, there are some flaws to this plan. The hospital does need to be taken down, but is more housing the best we can make of the area?
First of all, bringing more children into the schooling system will be difficult, and it will only hurt us eventually. With existing problems with our school budget under Chapter 70, the cost will certainly catch up to us even if we get more financial aid for having more students – what with the cost of resources and limited space at Malden High, we may struggle to bring in new families. Why should we bring children and parents into this situation?
Also, if we are filling the entire area that the hospital currently resides with apartments, there are going to be a very large amount of units that will not likely fill quickly. The amount of the housing there, combined with the anticipated 245 housing units that will be coming to Pleasant Street when city hall finally comes down, there are going to be many empty places for a while. The cost of keeping those empty units up while there is no one paying the rent is a very high one. We would be losing so much money if things don’t work in our favor with real estate.
There are so many other options and opportunities for this space. If we were to fill the space with businesses or recreational facilities, there is so much more potential. First, where there aren’t many businesses in that end of Malden, those places would be used a lot by those in the neighborhood. A walk to the nearest convenience store is 45 minutes alone.
Also, with the space being so close to Medford, that makes whatever would be there accessible to those people too. That makes people come into Malden, and has even more people using the services we would provide.
The point is, if we make these apartments, the city of Malden could be cheated out of something great. Something that pleases both the government and our citizens is worth it, and should be considered.
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