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House In Front Of Children's Hospital Oakland Could Be Yours, If You Can Take It Away

OAKLAND (CBS SF) -- The little house that looks so out of place in front of Children's Hospital Oakland is looking for a new plot of land to call home, and the hospital is willing to pay thousands of dollars for someone to take it away.

If you've ever taken BART between Ashby and MacArthur stations, you've probably seen the little white house with a Spanish tile roof sitting between the raised tracks and the hospital.  The hospital actually owns the house, and wants to expand the hospital with a new building on the site.

The home was built over 80 years ago on the corner of 52nd Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Way in Oakland, and what was a tiny hospital down the street grew into the large complex that surrounds the home today.

After decades of refusing to sell the land to the hospital, the owner, Lawrence Bossola died in 2002, and the executor of his will sold the home to the hospital.  A portion of the sale price was donated to the hospital in honor of Bossola.

"He didn't want to sell. When the outpatient center was being constructed in the '90s, he said, 'That's great, but I'm not moving,'" Melinda Kriegel of UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland said.

The hospital is offering the home to anyone who can remove it, and even throwing in $20,000 to help with the costs.

"This was a cherished house, and our staff who worked here and everyone at the hospital does feel a kinship to this house.  We'd hate to see it demolished.  We much prefer it be given to someone who can give it a new lease on life," Kriegel said.

 

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