After some months of waiting, I received a call from Governor Deval Patrick‘s press contact Cynthia Roy about the Springfield Fiscal Recovery Trust Fund. I had hoped that perhaps the $4.4 million allotted in the governor’s proposed budget with that earmark might be an indication of some increased fiscal ease for the city, but it turns out it’s just a year’s worth of allocation for the same old loan that was already set aside. In other words, it’s nothing new, it just has a fancy name. Oh well. The city still has to pay back the money.
In other state budget news, the governor apparently visited WGBY‘s downtown Springfield studio on April 11 to do an interview with Jim Madigan for "The State We’re In," aired on April 13. Its focus is "largely on the $26.7 Billion Fiscal Year 2008 budget [Patrick] proposed to the legislature in late February and how it compares to the budget plan just released by the House Ways and Means Committee."
Several weeks ago I received a now-outdated study, "ITD Contingency Data Center Report," dated September 29, 2006, regarding the Commonwealth’s effort to find a location for a new data backup facility, a Massachusetts Information Technology Center (MITC). The former Tech High School on Elliot Street is one such potential location. The document basically compares and contrasts Tech High with Building 104 at the STCC Technology Park.
The rear of former Technical High School last fall
Much tweaking of plans has likely taken place since September, especially among the state Division of Capital Asset Management, the state’s Information Technology Division, and STCC. Efforts may be underway to create a more appealing environment at the STCC Technology Park, and perhaps meet several of the needs the September study outlines so clearly. It’s rather striking, all the same, in reading the study, how clear as day it outlines the need to locate a backup facility at Tech rather than STCC based on a number of factors. Many of those hurdles would be tough for STCC to overcome.
For example, in looking at the two potential sites, the study says that STCC’s Building 104 is "closer to major intersections (Federal, State and Walnut Streets) than ITD prefers. To meet ITD Tier 3 or 2+ security and autonomy requirements the building site area dedicated to ITD would have to be developed as a secure area, as would all shipping and receiving facilities. The fact that the site has a main driveway on the Federal Street side common to all tenants in this multi-building site presents a challenge."
But that’s all it is—a challenge. Perhaps it will not stand in the way of the data center locating at STCC.
Another major problem with Building 104 for this purpose is that it provides too much square footage: 116,000 square feet, in comparison to roughly 69,500 planned for a newly-constructed building at the Tech High site (preserving the original facade, in what Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin would call a facade-ectomy). Building 104 would have to be retro-fit, whereas Tech High could be built to current standards, gifted to the state from the city at no cost, with no water source threat above the facility, unlike in Building 104. The list goes on: Tech High has a square footprint, whereas Building 104 is rectangular, not optimal for data centers.
Last December, I wrote that without the study in hand, "the public is more challenged to parse the political wrangling currently emerging in the local media on this subject. And officials are perhaps more likely to wrangle." Something tells me that wrangling is still alive and well on this, but it’s not getting much media play at the moment. Perhaps officials had their fill of that over the winter. Meanwhile, I have the study in hand, with no sense that it is relevant to the discussion.
