As the Fayetteville Public Library devotes itself to analyzing its space needs and the public’s desires for the library’s potential expansion, talk occasionally turns to the possibility the cherished facility might need land next door.
As luck would have it, “next door” means the site of the old Fayetteville, vacant and deteriorating.
The hospital served the needs of the community in various capacities for 100 years. Is it time for it to serve the community in another way?
But there’s some local history to keep in mind before the community can start counting on that property for library purposes. Although the city of Fayetteville held the deed to the City Hospital property for nearly 100 years, it’s not the current owner. Today, it belongs to Washington Regional Medical Center, which managed City Hospital since the early 1990s and, to the shock of many, made the decision to shut the facility down last July.
Did you ever get one of those feelings that something just wasn’t quite right, but you couldn’t put your finger on it? That describes our feelings about this land next door to the library. As recently as two years ago, the city held the deed. Today, Washington Regional has full control of it and can name its price.
If we were talking to a doctor, we’d probably describe our symptom as having a slight touch of heartburn about those circumstances.
In the early 1900s, Fayetteville needed a hospital.
It got one in 1912 through the work of city leaders and local supporters, on land donated by Stephen K.
Stone, a longtime Fayetteville merchant, and his wife.
The Stones’ deed stated the city could have the land as long as it or cash from its sale was used for the city’s hospital.
Nearly three years ago, city government planned to build a traffic roundabout in front of a new hospital, Washington Regional Medical Center, in north Fayetteville. It needed land from Washington Regional to get it done.
Washington Regional suggested to city officials that by designating their hospital as the “successor” to City Hospital, the downtown property could be turned over entirely to Washington Regional. At the time, the medical center’s leadership said it would one day like to replace City Hospital with a new facility, but it needed the deed to set that in motion.
The city obliged, and got 1.1 acres it needed for the roundabout.
About a year later, Washington Regional pulled the plug on City Hospital, ending a century of health care there. No plans for a replacement have been announced.
So, here we are today, with the wildly successful library potentially in need of expansion room on land the city once held that another major community institution, Washington Regional, now holds and is marketing it as a “prime location for commercial, multifamily, medical or student housing.”
Pass the Tums.
We’re reminded the library has a long way to go before it decides whether it even wants to consider the City Hospital property. Washington Regional could rightly sell the land to a developer and fulfill the dictates of the deed by applying the proceeds to its operations.
Legally speaking, that’s apparently how it all had to happen because of the deed restrictions. Practically speaking, it will seem odd if the library ends up landlocked by a piece of property that served the community for so long.
Opinion, Pages 5 on 04/23/2013