Peterson: Thoughts on Monday's Meeting with State About Medfield State Hospital

The representatives from the Massachusetts Administration and Finance and Division of Capital Asset Management (DCAM) had no particular stated use or uses in mind for the site when they met with Town of Medfield representatives and suggested we all, together, take a fresh look at alternatives.

The only use specifically mentioned by them was a college and that one only because Secretary of Administration and Finance, Jay Gonzalez, seemed to suddenly recall having spoken to the Oleana person but had no real information about him and/or his concept.  Gonzalez asked if we had spoken with him too and I shared my limited one contact and my thoughts that his concept seemed to me to be pie in the sky due to the small sizes of both the proposed college and the adjoining housing component, both of which need efficiencies of scale in my experiences to succeed, after seeing Lasell College from its board of directors for 20 years and watching Lasell Village get built, operate, and grow. 

Both Lasell College and Lasell Village purposely got larger to take advantage of those economies of scale that larger entities possess.  Oleana’s proposal strikes me that it has little real financial viability. In any event, while colleges may look nice, they do not make the greatest of neighbors due to weekend parties that now start on Thursday evenings and they pay no property taxes.

The state government officials offered up no ideas for specific potential uses. Gonzalez suggested that the Town of Medfield should think of the possibilities as an “opportunity.”

I asked why they put the brakes on the housing proposal and Carole Cornelison, Commissioner of DCAM, said she wanted to take a fresh look at all options. I understood her to be saying that with a new commissioner comes a new look at what DCAM is and should be doing.

To read more posts on Peterson's blog, "Medfield 02052," click here.