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Supporters of garden at Children's Hospital ask attorney general to block its elimination
By adamg on Mon, 08/17/2015 - 1:45pm
WBUR reports on the struggle to keep the hospital from putting up a new building on what is now Prouty Garden. The attorney general's office is involved because she oversees charities and garden supporters argue the garden is a charitable gift that can't simply be removed.
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Comments
Balancing
"The new building is necessary to create a state-of-the-art neonatal intensive care unit and a new pediatric heart center"
So we can heal desperately sick babies and children with sick hearts, or we can have a nice place for people to stroll. I'll take the saving-children one.
The question is
Is there are way to provide the new space without getting rid of the garden? I doubt anyone's arguing against providing care.
Children's ashes are interred
Children's ashes are interred in that garden. It is the only space the direly ill kids get to go outside and have a sense of peace. The hospital can be expanded without destroying the garden but the administrators don't want to spend the additional money required to do so.
Sure
If I was the parent of a sick kid I'd rather every available cent go into doctors and technology to help my kid not to preserve a park irrespective of however nice it is to have a park nearby.
Presumably it's a lot cheaper and logistically preferable to move the park instead of the building or else they wouldn't have proposed it this way.
They aren't moving the
They aren't moving the Olmsted, Jr. designed park. They are destroying it entirely and not replacing it with a like space. Children's proposal is a half hearted winter garden in a lobby and some space shoved up next to loud cooling towers and a helipad on the roof.
It would be like paving the Fens and providing an astroturf parklet on single street parking space on Boylston Street as a "1:1" replacement.
Children's sits on tons of real estate in the Longwood era under shell corporations. They are too cheap and greedy to develop those areas.
You are wrong
There will be a new park directly adjacent to the current garden, the same size if not bigger.
Have you ever had a kid at Children's
The greenspace is pretty critical for the critically ill kids, since they can't exactly go to a park or get to anything remotely like it.
You might want to look into the research on outcomes and access to such spaces before you make such presumptive remarks.
Except the hospital can't
Except the hospital can't bill an insurer $500 whenever a kid steps into the garden. Neonatal care is where the real money is.
Why can't they find space for both??
I understand the need for more space to house doctors, nurses and the technology and tools to heal desparately ill children, but healing sickness isn't 100% medicine and technology. "Laughter is the best medicine," is the old cliche and easing kids' fears and stresses fall into that category.
I may be just a teeny bit biased...when I was a child I was admitted to Children's Hospital for some fairly major sugery. One of the other children in the ward I was in was constantly yelling, crying and complaining day and night...so much so that I couldn't get any rest and it was negatively affecting my recovery.
Following the suggestion of both my surgeon and several of the nurses, my parents would wheel me out the the Prouty garden where I would pick a pleasant corner and nap for several hours. It helped a lot. So much so that I was able to be move out if ICU sooner and discharged to go home sooner than expected.
TL;DR The Prouty garden is also necessary to the healing process.
Good point. Just a note,
Good point. Just a note, there are not really any mass wards anymore. Patients get double rooms now, and there are some private rooms.
The new building planned at Children's, displacing most of the garden, is to accommodate the shift to all private rooms, which is becoming the norm in hospitals now.
Not an either or situation
This won't be the last expansion of the hospital in the future. I'm not familiar with their master plans, but it seems obvious that the Longwood Medical area is almost full and the hospitals will have to be expanding in different directions or areas. If the garden is saved, they will still be building a neonatal care facility. Just not there. It's not as if children's care will suffer.
I hope the garden can be kept, because it provides a much needed respite to patients and relatives in a very stressful time in a very congested area.
Ends justifying means
Seems to be the basis most of you operate on. You don't seem to care about principals or terms of legal contracts or that they are upheld. The AG has a solemn responsibility to enforce charitable trusts.
Put it on the roof?
This seems like a solvable problem.
Probably not possible
There are some really large, old trees in there- including a gorgeous Lebanon cedar. I used to work at Children's and everyone's points that that garden helps heal sick kids are absolutely true. Every day I was out there, I saw numerous children in wheelchairs or hooked up to IV poles enjoying the flowers, sun, and fountains (and concerts weekly in the summer).
Children's does own a large amount of real estate in that area, and they should be building up (on top of existing buildings, or over their parking garages), not destroying the garden.
Put the neonatal unit...
...on the roof, as you suggest. Problem solved.
Or, turn loose of some of the real estate they're squatting on.
Not that garden
Put a *new* garden on the roof.
Kids need that kind of outdoor space. I totally agree. However that particular outdoor space doesn't *have* to remain.
Well that particular
outdoor space was given to the hospital with their promise that it would be in perpetuity. That was a provision of the gift.
It that means nothing, perhaps the hospital should rewrite its agreements with big donors of new structures--something I'm sure they will have no problem doing. s/
It's so inconvenient....
... to have to keep solemn, perpetual promises for more than a few years.
This is like what happened to
This is like what happened to the Barnes collection as portrayed in The Art of the Steal. Once you're dead, your wishes and instructions are worth squat if people with influence and power want something else.