BRMC buyer may force school, church from long time home
Published on August 4th, 1999
STONEHAM, MA - The Burlington based Gutierrez Company will buy the entire 41 acre Woodland Road campus of the bankrupt Boston Regional Medical Center, if a school and church abandon the property.
"We aren't leaving," said Dr. Nancy Vecchione, Principal of the Greater Boston Academy, a private high school under the umbrella of the Southern New England Conference of the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
The creditors have asked the church and school to get out within two weeks.
"They have no legal basis to stay on the property," said Attorney Ethan Jeffery of the creditors' counsel Hanify and King.
Attorneys for the school and church plan by Aug. 19 to file a response to the creditors' notice to vacate.
"We are looking for a legal answer," Vecchione said.
She said the school has been financially self-sufficient since its inception. Vecchione also said the school owns its own building, if not the land on which it sits.
The Adventists founded the hospital around the turn of the century. A Seventh Day Adventist Church has been on the property since 1953, and the Greater Boston Academy, a day and boarding school for more than 100 high school students, was built in 1965.
"Their staying on the property is going to affect the amount we can recover for the benefit of the creditors," Jeffery said.
A sale would help pay back the hospital's debts to thousands of creditors, but more than 100 children may be unable to begin the school year without major disruption, Vecchione said.
Linda Martella is the Academy Registrar and a parent of two students in the school.
"I think the school is being penalized for something not of its making," she said.
Vecchione said another Seventh Day Adventist Church in Stoneham, the Village Church on Maple Street, will not be affected, nor will the elementary program run by the Adventists on Pond Street. But the school and church on Woodland Road may have to move from their longtime home.
"This is a very painful personal loss," said graduate and Greater Boston Academy English teacher Rondi Aastrup. "I was born in the hospital. My mother worked their as a nurse, and her father helped build the buildings."
Aastrup said a school task force which was investigating expansion possibilities is now looking for alternate sites for the school.
"This is definitely going to disrupt the beginning of our school year on Aug. 30," Aastrup said. "But we intend to open somewhere."
So far no parents have unenrolled their children, Aastrup said, but recruiting for next year has been slow.
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