Neighbors of Mass General Hospital gathered for a first in-person community meeting since the beginning of the Covid pandemic. The meeting brought together neighbors and organizations from the West End and Beacon Hill.
MGH hosts these meetings every six months to promote local dialogue.
Nick Haney, public coordination & initiatives director for MGH, said that he is “trying to create a way for all the different groups that touch the hospital to communicate.”
Topics included the proposed redesign of Blossom Street, historical preservation efforts, arts and cultural programs at Vilna Shul and the West End Museum and community health.
“Nick’s found a good format to facilitate communication,” said Susann Benoit from the West End Civic Association. “We don’t always get a chance to talk about what we’re doing.”
The meeting was held on the second floor of The Russell Museum, a ten-yearold collection of exhibits that tells the 200-year history of MGH. For the past few years, the exhibits have been closed, and the space was used as a flu and covid vaccine clinic.
“People don’t recognize the wealth of organizations and opportunities here,” West End resident Jane Wilson said. “The construction has been so upsetting, but it has brought us together.”
Monthly abutters meetings focus on issues around the ongoing Cambridge Street Project next to the museum.
As old buildings get dismantled, pallets of historic bricks will be incorporated into the new construction and are also available for people in the community to take as keepsakes.
“MGH is doing a great job of pulling together its neighbors,” said Sylvia Stevens-Edouard, who is on the Board of Directors of the Museum of African American History.
“It’s a good feeling to discuss what’s been developing, in both the past and the future.”
“We’re slowly seeing people trek back into work at offices,” Jay Walsh, Director of the Downtown North Association said. “There’s more foot traffic.”
A woman in the audience brought up NIMBY concerns. Residents with questions about the unhoused who congregate on Cambridge Street may reach out to Boston’s Healthcare for the Homeless Program. “These are not homeless pedophiles lining up, looking for free dinners,” she said.
Food justice systems to feed the unhoused continue to grow, said Sarah Gerard, who has been pastor at Old West Church for the past nine-years. Working with The Boston Food Forest Coalition “we harvest thousands of pounds of produce every year and send them to the Woman’s Lunch Place.”
State Representative Jay Livingstone summed up the community’s curiosity in “prior projects, which some people had thought stopped but hadn’t.” Concerns about changes to the neighborhood, he said, “bring together nonprofits around Mass General to facilitate conversations.”
