Norwood Hospital's six-year nightmare finally has an exit ramp.

Governor Maura Healey signed a bill Friday letting the state seize Norwood Hospital through eminent domain, and honestly, it's about time. The hospital has sat empty since a catastrophic flood in June 2020 wrecked its electrical systems and forced 90 people to evacuate. What followed was a masterclass in corporate dysfunction: Steward Health Care, the for-profit chain that ran the place, kept promising a rebuild, then stopped paying for construction, then filed for bankruptcy in October 2024. The half-finished hospital has just been sitting there ever since — a hulking, unusable reminder of what happens when a community's only hospital becomes a pawn in a private equity mess.

Starting November 1, the state's Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance can legally take the 11-acre property from current owner Medical Properties Trust, an Alabama-based REIT that has had zero incentive to finish what Steward started. The law then allows the state to hand the site off to a nonprofit to actually operate a hospital there again. That's a big deal for Norwood and the surrounding towns, which have gone six years without a local emergency room — meaning longer ambulance rides and more strain on hospitals in Boston, Dedham, and beyond.

The catch: eminent domain isn't instant. Expect valuation fights, likely legal pushback from Medical Properties Trust, and probably years before a working hospital reopens. But this is the first real structural move toward getting a new operator in the door, and it passed with bipartisan urgency — the Senate approved it July 29, the House followed two days later. Watch for DCAMM to start laying out its timeline this fall. Full story at Boston.com →

A commuter rail train nearly killed a delivery driver in Cohasset. Just after midnight Sunday, a 33-year-old Mansfield man delivering packages made a wrong turn onto the Greenbush Line tracks at the North Main Street crossing and got stuck. He got out and ran clear seconds before a train — carrying about 15 passengers — plowed into his Camry, totaling it. "A vehicle can be replaced. A life cannot," said Cohasset Police Chief William Quigley, who called it a close brush with tragedy. Boston Globe →

Boston's police union is picking a fight over parking tickets in West Roxbury. The Boston Police Patrolmen's Association is going after the city's Transportation Department for a ticket blitz along Centre Street enforcing the buffer zone between parking and bike lanes — $100 fines for cars parked less than six inches over a white line. The union is calling it enforcement without common sense, and plenty of residents seem to agree. Universal Hub →

State lawmakers are haggling over whether pet shops can still sell dogs and cats. The PETS Act has cleared both chambers in different forms — the Senate wants to ban pet store sales of dogs, cats, and rabbits outright, while the House left that piece out. Negotiators are now trying to find a compromise before the session clock runs out, with animal welfare advocates pushing hard for the ban. MassLive →

A federal appeals court just gave Springfield and other Massachusetts communities new life in their climate grant fight. A D.C. Circuit panel — including two Trump appointees — ruled that a lower court judge jumped to the merits of a case too fast, before settling whether the underlying grant money was even still available. Springfield and a coalition of nonprofits sued after the EPA yanked their Environmental and Climate Justice Community Change grants; the ruling doesn't guarantee the money comes back, but it keeps the case alive. Western Mass Politics & Insight →

East Bridgewater is still trying to figure out how it got scammed out of $425,000. The Select Board tabled a proposal to hire a cybersecurity firm to investigate a wire-fraud scheme that saw someone impersonate the town's litigation counsel and walk away with nearly half a million taxpayer dollars. Board members said the vendor's plan focused too much on future prevention and not enough on explaining what actually went wrong in June. South Shore News →

Plymouth schools just locked in a 20-year energy overhaul — without raising taxes. The School Committee voted unanimously to partner with Ameresco on a performance-based contract to replace aging HVAC systems and roofing across district buildings, starting with South Elementary. The deal is structured to pay for itself through utility rebates and efficiency savings. South Shore News →

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