Nantucket Cottage Hospital has sealed the deal on a $3.7 million investment in new staff housing with the acquisition of two new duplexes within the Richmond Great Point Development.
The hospital closed on 39 and 41 Beach Grass Road last Friday, spending $1.85 million on each recently-completed duplex unit.
Chris Glowacki, Nantucket Cottage Hospital’s vice president for strategy and community development, said the new housing units will be dedicated for seasonal employees as well as interim housing for new year-round hires. The two duplexes will provide the hospital with a total of 12 bedrooms for staff members.
“It’s a big step, and there’s more to come,” Glowacki said. “We are still, like everyone else, very actively looking for housing and encourage anyone with seasonal or year-round rentals who might be interested in bringing them to the hospital to contact us. We still have gaps to fill. Part of the reason we went for this additional housing capacity now is because we’re increasing our seasonal capacity to deal with the increasing demand for services we saw last summer.”
Nantucket Cottage Hospital is the island’s second-largest employer after the town, and already owns or manage about 30 older units of housing, a mix of single-family homes and duplexes. Most of those units are dedicated to visiting physicians and traveling (temporary agency) staff members.
The funds for the two new duplexes will come from the hospital’s $120 million capital campaign for the new hospital. Roughly $20 million of the capital campaign dollars were earmarked for employee housing initiatives following the expansion of the campaign that was announced in 2016 with the Percelay family’s $10 million gift.
Disclosure: the author of this report Jason Graziadei previously worked at Nantucket Cottage Hospital from 2013 to 2021. N Magazine publisher Bruce Percelay is a major donor to Nantucket Cottage Hospital and the co-chair of the 2022 Boston Pops on Nantucket fundraiser for the hospital.
