06/15/2026
From the Boston Globe:
Mass General Brigham tried to resurrect closed hospital, but ex-Steward partner raised the price even more, lawmaker says
Lawmaker says talks ended after property owner gave unacceptable price, then raised it
By Jonathan Saltzman Globe Staff, Updated June 15, 2026, 5:30 a.m.
Norwood Hospital has been in a state of a partial rebuild for years, after its demolition following 2020 flooding. DAVID L. RYAN/GLOBE STAFF
For roughly two years, the massive skeleton of a hospital has stood unfinished in Norwood, an unsightly symbol of the spectacular downfall of its disgraced and bankrupt former operator, Steward Health Care.
Community members and local officials have long pushed for the completion of the replacement to the flood-ravaged Norwood Hospital, with little luck. Now government officials have revealed that Mass General Brigham held talks late last year with the property's owner to buy the 11-acre construction site in the hopes of finally completing the project and reopening the hospital.
But the owner, Medical Properties Trust, an Alabama real estate investment trust, sought "flagrantly unreasonable" sums from MGB, and the negotiations fizzled out, according to Representative John H. Rogers. The Norwood Democrat said he had personally encouraged both sides to make a deal.
The talks between MGB and MPT, which have not been reported, began late last fall and continued into early this year. MPT requested $250 million, Rogers said, but the state's biggest health care system said that was too much. The owner came back with another price, Rogers said: $375 million.
"Coming back with a second asking price that's 50 percent higher when you know the price should be much lower was egregious, said Rogers, who added that he was not aware if MGB made counteroffers. He added that "both parties were technically still at the table early this year," but the negotiations went nowhere.
Norwood Hospital, which was devastated by a storm flood in 2020 and demolished to pave the way for a new building, is the only one of eight former Steward hospitals in Massachusetts whose fate remains unresolved. It served an estimated quarter of a million people in a dozen nearby communities.
"If you basically have the infrastructure of a brand-new hospital built ... I can't think of anything more foolish than to not make sure that it gets done," said Julie Pinkham, a Quincy resident and the recently retired executive director of the Massachusetts Nurses Association union who serves on a regional task force pushing for completion of the hospital.
MGB said it had no comment.
An MPT senior vice president who handles media inquiries did not return multiple phone and email messages. MPT had bought Steward hospitals' land and buildings in a sale-leaseback deal in 2016. The arrangement left the hospitals on the hook for excessively high rents, weakening them financially before life-threatening lapses in care occurred, a Globe Spotlight Team investigation reported.
The Spotlight Team in 2024 found a pattern of overpayment in MPT purchases of Steward real estate. Asked at that time about what appeared to be inflated hospital valuations, MPT's then-spokesperson Drew Babin called the Globe's findings "false and misleading" and said "MPT stands firmly behind our rigorous underwriting process."
Babin also said MPT was primarily a landlord to Steward, but occasionally provided financing "because we have always believed Steward's hospitals are critical to the healthcare of their communities."
Tony Mazzucco, Norwood's longtime town general manager, said that he was aware of the recent talks involving Mass General Brigham and that whoever bought the construction site would have to spend $100 million to $150 million to finish it.
MGB officials told Mazzucco that they were prepared to pay, in his words, "a significantly appropriate" sum, but he had no specific figure to share.
Norwood Hospital has been closed since June 28, 2020, after a storm in the area dumped nearly six inches of rain in 90 minutes. Flooding destroyed the facility's electrical room, cutting off power and forcing the evacuation of all patients. The damage was so severe the hospital, which had about 20o beds, had to be razed.
Steward paid for that, then launched a $375 million project to rebuild the century-old institution. The steel framework of the hospital went up.
But in 2024 Steward, a for-profit national chain, ran out of money, stopped paying its bills, and collapsed in a bankruptcy that made headlines across the country. MPT paid to build a roof, install a heating and cooling system, and add windows and metal panels to seal the structure before winter, the Globe reported last year.
Because Norwood Hospital was closed when Steward declared bankruptcy, and its doctors and nurses had moved elsewhere, it wasn't among the 31 hospitals nationally that Steward put up for sale. Norwood Hospital's travails were overshadowed by the broader crisis provoked by Steward's collapse, but local residents say they still intensely feel its absence.
Paul Ronco, a Norwood firefighter and paramedic for more than 30 years who retired in April, is haunted by memories of taking two local patients with life-threatening heart emergencies on ambulance runs that went right past Norwood Hospital not long after it closed.
One patient was a man in his 50s having a heart attack. Paramedics brought him to what was then called Good Samaritan Medical Center in Brockton, another Steward hospital. The other was a 9-month-old baby in cardiac arrest whom paramedics drove to Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital — Needham. The baby died on the way.
"There's no saying the baby would have survived anyway, but it's just disheartening when you're driving past a hospital with a baby in cardiac arrest," he said.
Steve Costello, a 69-year-old lifelong Norwood resident who retired last year as chief executive of Bank of Canton, said that having a hospital in his hometown had been a "comfort blanket" to him.
When he was in his 40s, he said, he went to the hospital emergency room with severe chest pains, fearing he might be having a heart. It turned out to be a pulled muscle from exercising with elastic bands.
His four adult children were born at the hospital, he said, and he sent bank workers experiencing emergencies there. It took only about 15 minutes to get the employees to that E.R. from Canton.
Given that the Norwood parcel has a partly constructed hospital and a parking garage, Mazzucco said, there is no other use for the land. The Boston area has a glut of vacant laboratory and office space, he explained, and it would be costprohibitive to convert the unfinished hospital into apartments, even if the land could be rezoned. "It's a worthless piece of property unless a hospital buys it," Mazzucco said.
In 2024, the Globe reported that no bidders were willing to buy or rent the Steward hospitals in Massachusetts at MPT's asking prices. A US Bankruptcy Court judge approved the sale of six Steward hospitals to nonprofit owners for a total of $343 million. That was less than what Rogers said MPT wanted for Norwood Hospital when the real estate trust came back with a second price.
In January, after the negotiations between MGB and MPT ended, Rogers filed a bill for the state to take the property by eminent domain for what he calls a "reasonable price," creating a potential pathway for it to reopen under a new owner. The state used that tactic to seize Steward's St. Elizabeth Medical Center in Brighton in 2024, ultimately reaching a settlement with then-owner Apollo Asset Management to pay $66 million for the functioning hospital. The property was transferred to Boston Medical Center, which renamed it Boston Medical Center - Brighton.
Rogers said his bill is under consideration by the House Ways and Means Committee. If lawmakers don't approve it by the end of the legislative session on July 31, he said, he could refile it next year.
The prospect of Norwood Hospital staying in limbo dismayed Jane Kelly, who has lived in Sharon for almost 40 years. Kelly, who is in her 70s, said her family has long relied on the hospital for care, from joint replacements to emergency treatment. She said the state should seize the property through eminent domain.
"I believe only the state can get Norwood completed and operational,” she said via email. "We can spend billions on everything else - but not find the $ to fund Norwood?"
A spokesperson for the state Executive Office of Health and Human Services said the Healey administration was "ready to work with any healthcare operator that may be interested in taking over the Norwood Hospital campus." The statement said nothing about providing money, however.
Rebecca Ostriker and Catherine Carlock of the Globe staff contributed reporting.
Jonathan Saltzman can be reached at [email protected].
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