Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno announced last week that the city has found a developer to take over the former School Department headquarters at 195 State Street. College Street Management, or CSM North, the New Haven-based company selected as the preferred developer for the building, plans to turn the handsome but worse-for-wear building into market-rate apartments.
Around the city, the news is getting mixed reviews. The addition of market-rate units is applauded by many who see it as a key to helping revive Springfield’s downtown by making the area livelier, safer and more attractive to businesses. Indeed, a comprehensive report on the city by the Urban Land Institute in 2006 called for “adding more market-rate housing in a variety of housing types to meet the market, such as lofts, townhomes, condominiums, and single-family homes.”
City officials, meanwhile, are excited to bring in a private developer for the property. (The only other development proposal submitted for it depended on public grants and tax breaks.) The City Council’s finance committee voted to recommend approval of the sale, and at deadline the full Council was scheduled to vote on the deal at its July 18 meeting.
But not everyone is happy about the proposed deal. “The Mayor is excited?” mayoral candidate Antonette Pepe asked in a press release, referring to a quote from Sarno in the Springfield Republican.
“Mayor Sarno seems to think that the tax payers have short memories,” Pepe continued. ” When the Mayor first hatched this scheme of moving the School Department to the Federal Building, it was stated that the sale would bring in at least $5 million. That seems to bring the sale amount short of $4,999,999. This is not sound fiscal management.”
The “scheme” Pepe refers to is the rather messy business that surrounded the School Department’s move from the State Street building last year. The department was relocated to the former federal building on Main Street, which itself was left vacant after a new federal courthouse was built on State Street. At the time, Pepe was among the critics who questioned the decision to move the School Department to the Main Street building without seeking competitive bids for leases on other spaces.
In her press release, Pepe refers to a “veil of secrecy” that “clouded the move.” Taxpayers, she contends, are taking a hit on the new School Department headquarters—paying to renovate the space; to lease the offices; to pay for the demolition of the old Asylum building nearby to create parking—that will not be offset by the tax revenue that would be generated by the new apartments.
(At-large City Councilor Tim Rooke, the most vocal critic of the no-bid lease at the former federal building, has voiced his support of the proposed development deal at 195 State.)
The third major mayoral candidate, Council President Jose Tosado, told the Advocate that he supports the creation of more market-rate housing downtown, but he’s “not sure we’re getting the best deal” on the CSM North project. Like Pepe, Tosado questioned the sale price. “We’d been told we’d get millions” for the building, he said, so why rush to sell it for $1? “Is that the best we can do?” asked Tosado, suggesting that the city should have taken more time and perhaps marketed the property more aggressively.
