If anyone but the county government owned the dilapidated, hazard-ridden, public nuisance known as the abandoned county hospital located on Southside Road the property file folder would be stuffed with citations and legal papers demanding they clean it up. However, the county owns it and does nothing about it.
When they oppose some project the Board of Supervisors often claim to be the stewards of the county, but in this case they are county’s leading slumlords.
The trouble-attracting contaminated eyesore hovers above the residential area of Riverview Estates like an ugly vulture and a constant reminder of the environmental threat it poses to the homes below; they can wait forever, it will never get better by itself. If a quake breaks up the building and dumps some asbestos on the residents the lawsuits will never end.
By now the county has certainly established that this property has almost no commercial value in its present condition and perhaps no commercial value at all. Private parties almost never buy the open-ended commitment to clean up a contaminated site because they know that in most cases the costs just keep going up. In evidence is the multi-million dollar bath the City of Hollister RDA took when it purchased and agreed to clean up the old Leatherback site for a fixed fee. We know what hazards we think are there, but history shows that you never know what you will find until you do the work.
This decision is long overdue and the county needs to get on with it. It's past time to clean up the old county hospital site and get off the slumlord list.