(Jan. 10, 2019) The Nantucket Cottage Hospital’s new $90 million healthcare facility has been delayed until the middle of February in order to complete improvements in the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems
Hospital president and CEO Margot Hartmann said the delay is due primarily to improvements and adjustments that need to be made to the heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems before the new building can open its doors between Prospect Street and Vesper Lane.
“This is the most complex building ever undertaken on the island,” Hartmann said. “We want to fine-tune it perfectly to serve patients and staff in the transition.”
Once the move to the new hospital is complete, asbestos remediation and demolition of the current building will begin, probably around March, hospital officials said. In its place will be expanded parking.
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To read the complete story, pick up the print edition of this week’s Inquirer and Mirror or register for the I&M’s online edition by clicking here.
Schools close Monday after shooting rumor on social media
(June 7, 2018) Nantucket schools were closed Monday after rumors of a shooting threat spread over social media “like wildfire” Sunday night.
Superintendent of schools Michael Cozort and police chief Bill Pittman both stressed the threat was in no way credible, butschool officials decided to cancel classes at Nantucket
Elementary School, Nantucket Intermediate School, Cyrus Peirce Middle School and Nantucket High School out of an abundance of caution and to allow the police further time to investigate, Cozort said.
The schools reopened Tuesday morning, and Nantucket High School’s annual academic awards ceremony was held as scheduled Monday night in the Mary P.Walker Auditorium. Police and school officials believe the rumors stem from a bomb threat called in to Nantucket High School May 19, which was not publicized while police investigated it. They have not identified who placed the call, but determined it too was not credible. They continue to investigate, and have called in the FBI to help trace its source, Cozort said.
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JFK bunker at Tom Nevers may be new museum (Inky Mirror Week of May 15, 2018)
(May 10, 2018 - Inky Mirror, Nantucket). At the height of Cold War tensions, just after President John F. Kennedy was sworn into office, Nantucket’s small Navy Base in Tom Nevers suddenly took on a much more important mission: sheltering the president and his family from radioactive fallout in the event of nuclear war.
Kennedy was famous for spending his summer weekends at the family’s Hyannis Port compound on Cape Cod and military leaders needed a place for him to safely run the country should the Soviet Union press the red button.
According to a 1996 article by Lawrence Whelan in the now defunct Nantucket Magazine, Naval leaders picked Nantucket to construct a 1,900-square-foot partially underground bunker because it was a short helicopter ride from Hyannis Port and avoided obvious targets like Boston and Otis Air Force Base.
There is now a growing movement to reopen the bunker as a museum, staged with furnishings that would have been inside in 1962.
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Inky Mirror Highlights (Week of April 2nd, 2018)
The warrant lacks big-ticket spending requests like recent proposals to expand the municipal sewer system or build a new town nursing home.
It does, however, seek to waive the fees for year-round homes connecting to a sewer-expansion project approved two years ago, ban the herbicide commonly found in Roundup, and amend the town charter to give the Board of Selectmen a more gender- neutral name.
It also contains 18 zoning articles: 13 proposed by the Planning Board and five by citizen’s petition.
Moderator Sarah Alger, who will preside over her 22nd meeting, said the past few months have been the quietest run-up to a Town Meeting that she can recall.
Inky Mirror Highlights (Week of March 26, 2018)
(March 25, 2018, Inky Mirror) Approximately 200 people attended Saturday’s “sibling” March For Our Lives on Nantucket, a companion demonstration to the national march in Washington, D.C. calling for increased gun control. Many of the participants on Nantucket were students, and many carried signs.