We Lost Our Hospital: Now What?

It has been 3 years now since Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center closed.  It was both the largest employer and the largest taxpayer in Plainfield, not to mention the place where almost everyone in town went, when they needed hospitalization, emergency room service, or a variety of outpatient services.  We still have the emergency room and nursing school, but quite possibly not for much longer.  Others have done so much in reporting upon this disaster, and trying to reverse it, that there is no point in my repeating the tale.  I offer a special thanks, however, to Dottie Gutenkauf, for leading the charge to undo the catastrophe.

The hospital “campus” remains zoned for “professional – office” use, including a hospital.  To get anything else built there, it would have to be rezoned, or a use variance must be obtained.  This is where we may still have a chance. 

If I am elected, I would most likely also serve again on the Planning Board.  The City Council does not vote on variances, but it does have to approve rezonings.  It also gets to approve or reject all nominations to be a Commissioner on these Boards.  In either capacity, I will vote against any proposal to do anything with the campus, except to reopen a hospital.  I want Solaris to sell the property to someone who will replace the hospital as it was.  I don’t care if Solaris has to give it away for $1.  The City could even buy it, if the price were low enough.

How would I expect to get away with this near-confiscation of the campus?  Easy: a hospital remains the “highest and best use” of the property, not to mention the thing most needed by the entire community.   And, the terrible loss Solaris would take would be a “self-created hardship”, a familiar rule in the field of land use law, which can be used to refuse approvals to landowners who complain of the normal regulations, and want to build something inappropriate, to stem their losses.  Solaris repeatedly stripped away departments and services that Muhlenberg had had for years, and moved them to its JFK Hospital in Edison.  I do not question that this was justified from its point of view, but I still feel like some evil power attacked us, just like 9/11, and took our hospital.  Note also that Solaris claims to be nonprofit, but that all its actions look just like the converse.

Although I have used JFK and it is a fine hospital, I have no interest in it.  It is remarkably hard to get to from here, located on a side street, even though it is only 5 miles away.  Muhlenberg, by contrast, had a near-perfect location, if you agree that its function was to serve a dozen or so towns, of which we are the largest.

I will devote my next article to the topic of why Muhlenberg got into such trouble in the first place.  For now, I will limit my blame mongering to repeating what others have noted: that our Assemblyman, our Mayor, and our Councilmen all had reason to notice that it was being stripped of its services, and in effect shrinking into vulnerability, yet they didn’t notice, or in any event, they didn’t do anything to alert the community to what was happening.

As a Councilman and/or Board member, I will make noise when I think it necessary for the community’s welfare, and I really don’t care if I step on a few toes along the way.  I always have, for the last 25 years.  My adversary has always claimed that he has done the same thing, and always will.  But he certainly wasn’t making noise when saving Muhlenberg was still possible.