Trenton's Riverside Hospital falls to the wrecking ball
When the wrecking ball smashed into the remains of what used to be the Riverside Osteopathic Hospital this week, Trenton Mayor Steven Rzeppa shouted with delight.
“Seeing the pictures of the exterior demolition on Wednesday was one of my proudest and happiest days as mayor here,” Rzeppa said in an email to the Detroit Free Press. “It’s been a blighted structure in an otherwise beautiful part of town with so much potential. Our residents have deserved better and we’re happy that that relief is finally coming.”
But for countless others — the thousands of moms who gave birth there, the children who said goodbye to moms and dads who died there, the folks patched up for broken bones or stitches in the ER — Riverside Hospital leaves behind a host of memories.
Marcia VanderBroek, a local resident of 33 years and former Riverside physician, shares a connection with the building as an employee and mother.
“We still run into physicians that we worked together with there, our staff that we worked together with there, I delivered both my kids there,” she said.
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VanderBroek also noted that her office for a number of years was located on the third floor at Riverside.
Nelson Perugi, a former Riverside employee and member of the City Council, said the hospital was a lynchpin for the community.
“Riverside Hospital was a unique environment to work at. It was a community hospital. It was family-oriented, and that’s something that you currently really don’t find in the health care industry. So that hospital obviously was and is now a dying breed."
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Perugi worked at the hospital from 1984 to 2002 as a lead CAT scan technologist and IT tax administrator and is sad to see the building go.
“It really has an emotional tie to the community and it’s a very sad day that the building ended up the way it is through business decisions that were made 20 years prior,” he said.
According to Downriver Things, the hospital was the first osteopathic hospital in the Downriver area and opened in 1944. It was originally licensed for only 30 beds but grew over time. In 1967, the hospital served nearly 7,000 patients and witnessed nearly 1,400 births.
The building, located at Truax Street and West Jefferson Avenue, served its last patient over two decades ago, closing in 2002. The demolition project is set to be complete by May after an agreement was made between the city and the site owner in 2021.
City administrator Dean Creech said in an email to the Detroit Free Press that the cost of the demolition project is in the range of $2.8 million to $3.1 million. Rzeppa also replied, saying the funding was primarily from the site owner, Dr. Iqbal Nasir, who had to contribute $1 million in escrow.
“The property is privately owned and the demolition is privately funded by the owner (Dr. Nasir) for the most part,” he said.
He added that the only exception is $1.5 million in federal ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds the project received via Wayne County.
Rzeppa said he doesn’t know what the property will be used for in the future as it’s privately owned.
“We don’t know what the future will hold for the site once demolition is complete yet, but this is an incredible leap forward to put it lightly,” he said.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Trenton Riverside Hospital demolished after 2 decades
