HOSPITALS AS NEIGHBORS

...Frequently controversial, fiercely free, committed to the layman's responsibility in the Church, Commonweal stands as an example of thoughtful analysis and determined integrity...

...I don't say it's wrong that the community should have some say, but I wonder how much say...

...There was no funding and they never intended to build the housing...

...After four years of battling, it remains uncertain whether a settlement will be reached in the Columbus dispute...

...Whatever the outcome, however, the larger challenge of how to control hospital expansion so that neighborhoods are not damaged remains to be met...

...The New York Archdiocese had reportedly urged the hospital to sign an agreement worked out in last-minute negotiations prior to the dedication, but the hospital refused...

...The Task Force, composed of hospital, community and city representatives, called attention to displacement of low and moderate-income tenants, poor housing management, secret assemblage of land, traffic congestion, the "seeming indifference of some institutions to local (health) needs as compared to research priorities" and the failure of many hospitals to consult citizens when planning physical expansion or health services...

...Columbus had applied for a $39.7 million low-interest state mortgage loan to build a 16-story acute-care wing adjacent to its main building...

...Nevertheless, it soon became clear that Columbus had severely miscalculated...

...The obscenity of trying to tear down 48 good apartments in a safe and very pleasant neighborhood for a 27-car parking lot is enough to get any self-respecting person's back up," said Worthy...

...The group performs the work of classic playwrights from Aeschylus to e. e. cummings with a heavy emphasis on the great modern writers---Chekhov, Ibsen, Strindberg --but it is known primarily as the source for a handful of new American plays that have moved into successful off-Broadway runs where they have been celebrated both for their productions and for themselves...

...The 12 tenants in the second building would then go through the same process while their building was renovated...

...Other critics charge that hospitals often decide what to build on the basis of available funding rather than on health needs...

...It's a flagrant example of institutional ruthlessness...

...In August, 1971, the tenants were presented with a major opportunity...

...About two-thirds of the tenants, including a number of Puerto Ricans and elderly people, did move out...

...Although legal grounds for stopping the approval were flimsy, the tactic worked...

...HOSPITALS AS NEIGHBORS PETER FREIBERG The corafi ct between institution mad community Once upon a time, hospitals may have been thought of as good neighbors, but that era appears to have passed in New York and other cities...

...Columbus, he says, was an "innocent victim" of pressures beyond its control, including tenant leaders who focused their wrath on Columbus to boost their drive to save low-rent housing...

...Nowhere have the conflicts between institutions and communities been more intense than in a section on Manhattan's East Side dubbed "Bedpan Alley" by neighborhood and tenant groups...

...would be fired and replaced with a respected management firm, no attempts would be made to relocate tenants or induce them to move through money offers, and the numerous housing violations would be corrected...

...Frances Xavier Cabrini, the first American saint, and a group of determined tenants in two tenements that the hospital has sought unsuccessfully to demolish for a parking lot...

...By mid-June, there was still no settlement...

...And it had not reckoned with the organizing and publicizing ability of William Worthy, a journalist who lives in the building...

...On the average, about 80 percent of the revenue from such hospitals now comes from governmental appropriations...

...The virtue of the production, when I saw it early in the run, was the ensemble playing of the company, a delicately balanced presentation marred in only a few instances by the kind of overpunching that turns character into caricature...

...They'd taken such punishment for the 27-car parking lot," says Worthy, "that they thought they'd embroider it with housing above...

...Commonweal: 359 A Citation from the CPA AT LAST MONTH'S annual convention of the Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada, meeting in Denver, Colorado, the CPA Board of Directors adopted the following resolution: "In recognition of 50 years of distinguished service to Church and nation, the Catholic Press Association presents its citation of merit to Commonweal magazine...

...This area, which still retains a mixed-income population living in tenements, brownstones and high-rises, contains four hospitals within one six-block strip--and three major medical institutions just a few blocks away...

...Even in 1969, the apartments were badly in need of repairs, but the fact that they were rent-controlled (a one-bedroom apartment rents for $52 a month) made them worth holding onto...

...Wilson's The Hot L Baltimore, which won a Critics Circle award for 1972-73, was the first of the plays to move into an extended run, which it is still enjoying at the downtown Circle in the Stluare...

...Tenants have pressed for tighter protective guarantees, expressing skepticism at the same time that the hospital will sign such a document...

...One major recommendation in the report stated: "When reasonably priced housing is in short supply, as at present, institutions should seek to avoid unnecessary or premature destruction of good housing...

...Throughout its history, Commonweal has achieved an influence far beyond its modest circulation, and limited resources--an influence on those of us in religious communications and on many thoughtful.Americans...

...Mason is the artistic director of the Circle Repertory Theatre Company, presently the most vigorous of the 0ff-off-Broadway organizations...

...The ease went to the city's Housing Court, where Stanley Nason was assigned as hearing officer...

...Except for Leonard Melfi, Lanford Wilson has always struck me as the schmalziest of the up--from-off-offBroadway playwrights...

...The Columbus controversy dates back to December, 1969, when the hospital bought the twin tenements across the street from its main building on E. 19th Street between Second and Third Avenues with the object of making 27 parking spaces for staff cars...

...6-28-74 IMPERFECT CIRCLE 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 THE STAGE One man's sentimentality is another man's substance...

...Yet, Marshall W. Mason, Wilson's friend and director, defended him in a Sunday Times interview (May 12, 1974) as an "honest Saroyan" after attacking the older playwright for being "gushy, sentimental...

...Stipends ranging from $300 to $2,500 were offered tenants to leave, while the building, according to tenant leaders, was allowed to deteriorate...

...The most obvious example was Mari Gorman as tough, boyish Jackie and, ironically, her performance was singled out for high praise, an indication, I guess, that you have to punch some critics to get their attention...

...It had underestimated the tenacity of a substantial number of tenants...

...The Sea Horse, by James Irwin (really Edward J. Moore, the play's co-star), the Circle's most recent contribution to off-Broadway, shows that Mason, as director, is as comfortable with a two-character play 28 June 1974:~160...

...Since casts change and productions tend to unravel during a long run, the ensemble may no longer be all that impressive in Baltimore, but the play is still available for anyone who wants to see the work of a playwright who approximates Mason's concept of the "ideal writer...

...When the application was on the verge of being approved, the tenants filed suit to block it...

...Meanwhile, the tenants continued a rent strike they had begun, sending their money to be held in escrow by their lawyer, Robert Ferrari...

...Mark Fresco, who is currently serving as a hospital attorney but was not involved in 1969, says the hospital "never wanted to do anything that would create controversy...

...Within short order, an agreement was reached...

...In return for the tenants' withdrawing their suit, Columbus signed a contract stipulating that the buildings would not be demolished, Urban Relocation Co...

...The hospital has been subject to the will of the community...

...But Columbus said it was willing to have Nason serve as hearing oflicer--a clear indication the hospital had decided it wanted a settlement...

...Frightened by a possible 28 lune 1974:358 delay, Columbus agreed to negotiate...

...Unable to evict the tenants because of the rent control law, Columbus hired the Urban Relocation Co., a firm that was later served with a citywide injunction by the State Attorney General against harassing tenants, to relocate them...

...What they share, according to Mason, is a concern for values...

...While Fresco says the controversy "is not a case of a domineering institution spreading its tentacles through the community," Worthy says the hospital, which owns several other nearby buildings, has a "grand design" to eventually expand on its entire square block...

...The proposal calls for the six tenants in one building to move into the other while their building is renovated...

...What Worthy calls "four years of bad faith" have produced an intense distrust of any hospital proposal, even one that seems fair on the surface...

...Their success, like that of The Championship Season and The River Niger on Broadway, may be trying to tell us something about the New York audience...

...party in deciding what a private organization does with the land it holds in private...

...In the midst of the furore, a tenant procession led by Father Daniel Berrigan on the occasion of Mother Cabrini's feast day received wide publicity, as did a demonstration last September that persuaded Terence Cardinal Cooke to cancel his scheduled appearance at the dedication of Columbus' new acute-care center...

...Three months ago, Columbus began eviction proceedings for non-payment of rent, the tenants countering that the landlord was refusing to provide essential services...

...It's not customary within the normal understanding of land ownership," says Fresco, "that every Tom, Dick and Harry will be a PETER FREIBERG, a New York Post writer specializing in urban affairs, recently won a Page 1 Award citation /rom the Newspaper Guild o/ New York /or his articles on metropot,tan-area neighborhoods...

...As with so many Wilson plays, it is a milieu piece, a gathering of types---this time in a down-at-heels residence hotel soon to be torn down, the only community or family that most of the inhabitants know...

...The Catholic Press Association expresses its congratulations, best wishes, respect and gratitude to CommonweaFs staff, past and present...

...Tenants and local politicians instituted a half-milliondollar damage suit against Columbus for breach of contract...

...Increasingly, the advantages of living near a hospital are viewed as being overwhelmed by the threat to neighborhood stability posed by expanding institutions...

...The hospital then suggested the general outlines of an agreement whose details are now being worked out by lawyers for both sides...

...Upon completion, they would move back, paying relatively small rent increases...

...what they share, so far as I am concerned, is a return to old-fashioned realism and a healthy respect for stereotype and--I'm sorry--sentiment...

...Certainly, the Columbus conflict is an example of some of the problems pinpointed by a special Task Force on Medical Facilities Expansion established by the New York City Planning Commission...

...At the time of purchase, 47 of the 48 apartments in the two buildings were occupied, along with a storefront used by a newspaper delivery firm...

...The hospital would be able to charge marketvalue rents in new apartments not occupied by present tenants...

...Of the numerous disputes that have erupted out of this volatile mix, none has evoked more bitterness than a four-year-old battle between Columbus Hospital, an 82-year-old institution founded by St...

...Nason offered to disqualify himself on the grounds that he had headed the East Side local planning board, an advisory body that strongly supported the tenants...

...It had not envisioned the extent of support the tenants would receive from community organizations and elected officials in "Bedpan Alley...

...Like more than half the city's hospitals, Columbus is a "voluntary" institution--privately operated (by the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart) but non-profit...

...In June, 1972, Columbus disavowed the contract and offered each tenant $8,000 to vacate the apartment, with the option of moving into a new building that the hospital proposed for construction above a 50-car parking garage...

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...The Planning Commission, which has often been accused of favoring institutions applying for zoning and other approvals, is currently considering the Task Force report...

...Arguing that they must grow to attract qualified staff, keep up with new technology and improve research and health facilities, hospitals have destroyed sound housing, forced families and retail businesses to move and created streets that are unsafe not only for remaining local residents but for the personnel the hospitals seek to recruit...

...Urban Relocation was fired (although no replacement was brought in) and some repairs were made, but tenants say the hospital never intended to live up to the agreement...

...Columbus counter-sued, charging that it had been "coerced" into signing the agreement...

...While there is no question that expansion is sometimes necessary, hospitals have shown little willingness to experiment with decentralizing their facilities...