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Memorial Health System continues to clear houses

Ken Strahler’s demolition crew uses an excavator to demolish homes along Muskingum Drive and Matthew Street. (Photo by Janelle Patterson)

MARIETTA — With an eye on additional parking abutting the main Marietta campus of the Memorial Health System, Matthew Street and Muskingum Drive will be more barren within the week.

“It depends on the weather but we could be done by Monday,” said Ken Strahler, president of Ken Strahler Masonry Inc., whose crews began demolishing eight houses between the two roads this week. Six were down by Tuesday with two more planned this week.

Along Muskingum Drive, 100, 106, 120 and 132 are now in heaps of rubble along with 1008 Third St. and 309 Matthew St. Today, 319 and 321 Matthew St. will also come crashing down.

“Last year we tore down three houses, 112, 114 and 118 Muskingum Drive, all making way for the hospital’s expansion,” said Strahler.

With jobs in health care growing in the county and the health system sitting as the top employer, a challenge for parking not only for patients but employees has long been a struggle.

In December the system’s CEO Scott Cantley explained the growing need for parking at the Marietta hospital in recent years and that additional house purchases and demolitions would be coming.

“We’re now just shy of 3,000 employees in the system,” said Jennifer Offenberger, director of marketing and public relations for the system, on Tuesday. “As the health system continues to grow and provide specialized services for the whole region we need more spaces for those coming for those services.”

Offenberger said the strategic plan of the health system is to add parking down the hill between the two roads for employees, opening up spaces nearer the hospital for patients.

“We’re bringing specialists here as part of that expansion so that you don’t have to travel when you’re ill, you can get the best care at home,” said Offenberger. “We hope the public sees that growth as a positive for the community and sees how our health system, which is the last independent system in the region, can have that impact.”

Offenberger said the system has no further plans to purchase more homes currently but that system representatives will be meeting with the city’s planning commission on a request for a zoning variance to install temporary parking lots on the land currently being leveled.5-24House3

“There will be a mixture of greenery and some parking,” she said. “We want to make sure we do our part to be good neighbors.”

But local residents surrounding the campus have mixed feelings about the parking expansion.

“It will probably be better…all of these houses were in bad shape anyways and looked like that forever because no one ever fixed most of them up,” said Ron Bayless, who lives on Fort Street, near the hospital. “The hospital has got to expand so it is what it is. I wonder if they’re going to buy all of these houses and clear the hill. I remember years ago, this whole hillside was houses, way back in the 1970s the whole ridge was a neighborhood. That’s really changed a lot.”

There are a couple homeowners who have not agreed to sell.

“It’s almost harassment now with the realtor calling me all the time asking what my price is to sell my home,” said Linda Walters, of 319 Matthew St. “I already sold them the house I grew up in (at 132 Muskingum Drive). It’s hard to see it torn down after I was raised there and raised my kids there, but I’m not ready to move and I don’t think it’s fair to put a parking lot on both sides of me.”

Walters said she plans to attend the city meeting on June 21 at 1:30 p.m. in protest of the lot plans and said she felt “ripped off” for the price she received on the Muskingum home.

“If I ever do sell my house (on Matthew Street) I’ll want to be compensated for that. The other houses got around $20,000 more than I did,” she said.

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