I n the midst of plans to vacate a building recently purchased by MGM Springfield, Hampden County Sheriff Michael Ashe got some bad news: funding had fallen through for the relocation of the Western Massachusetts Correctional Alcohol Center .
The 29-year-old minimum security facility, located in a former YWCA on Howard Street, is among a handful of service organizations that fall within the footprint of the casino, which will occupy 14.5 acres of downtown real estate.
Some organizations, like the Springfield Rescue Mission on Bliss Street, have been fortunate. The Rescue Mission is getting a new headquarters on Mill Street. Others are in a more turbulent time. The AIDS Foundation, which moved from Main Street Springfield to Chicopee, has seen the number of people walking in off the streets for help diminish in the past few weeks.
Since its founding in 1985, the Western Massachusetts Correctional Alcohol Center has treated over 17,000 inmates. Managing about 180 inmates at a time, the program provides several weeks of detox from alcohol and substance abuse, followed by counseling and community restitution programs, in which inmates work with over two dozen nonprofit agencies including the Salvation Army and local police departments. The program also provides inmates with the ability to attend Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings.
“We love being right in the city,” Ashe said. Whether the facility moves to Mill Street or to another property, he said he is focused on minimizing the impact it has on the inmates and the agencies with which they work.
Ashe was optimistic about moving the jail to a building on Mill Street, about a mile and a half away. But earlier this month the firm hired to renovate the space, low-bidder C&W Equities, backed out of the project forcing the jail to go back out to bid.
Despite this, Howard Street has a hard and fast move out date of March 31 and little means to make it happen.
“We were working with a developer. For them to step out, that was disappointing. I had to start over again,” Ashe said in an interview last week. “I know MGM wants to work with us, and us with them. But right now, March 31 is not realistic.”
In a Jan. 29 letter to the state Gaming Commission, Ashe wrote: “It is grossly unfair and unacceptable that this commonwealth’s model correctional substance abuse treatment center should be put out of existence to make way for a casino, without appropriate mitigation.” In that letter, Ashe requested $4 million from the Community Mitigation Fund, by which the commission awards money to applicants adversely affected by casino construction.
Ashe is competing with 23 other proposals for the cash. The commission expects to award funds by mid-summer, but in a Feb. 5 open meeting in Boston, commissioners agreed to consider Ashe’s application “expedited,” given the narrow window of time before the casino seeks to break ground.
A final decision by the commission on Ashe’s application is still forthcoming.
MGM spokesperson Carole Brennan said that the company has offered Ashe $150,000 in relocation funds if the center can vacate by March 31. MGM has also spent $580,000 on holding the building on Mill Street as an option to host the correctional alcohol center.
When asked about the $150,000 — which is 3.75% of the amount Ashe is requesting from the gaming commission — Brennan said, “I think that was just a reasonable number that was agreed.”
Brennan said MGM is confident the jail will be out by March 31 and declined to comment on other possible scenarios.
“This program has been the crown jewel of the sheriff’s department,” said Ashe, who took the job in 1975. Although he admits he has to stay open right now to different options, he is strongly hoping that a deal works out for the building on Mill Street. “We want to stay in the South End. This is our neighborhood.”
Smooth move
For some service organizations, the relocation will be fairly smooth. The Springfield Rescue Mission, which has been on Bliss Street since 1962, will transfer their title to MGM Springfield later this year in exchange for a building at 10 Mill St., which the casino purchased for $2.3 million and has made a commitment to renovating. The final budget and design plans for this renovation have yet to be finalized.
The physical move, however, will be trying. The Springfield Rescue Mission provides food — serving roughly 100,000 meals a year — and clothing to the homeless. It also runs a 40-bed shelter on Bliss Street. When this move happens, staff will need to transport every resident to the new property in a matter of hours, said Ron Willoughby, the mission’s executive director and CEO. “The issues are real,” he said. “We need to be able to leave after serving a meal and go up to Mill Street and get the next meal cooking. It’s that tight.”
For Jessica Crevier, the executive director of the AIDS Foundation of Western Massachusetts, the relocation was even more logistically fraught. For eight years, Crevier and her volunteer staff operated out of a donated space on Main Street. In December, they had to move out.
“Most of our operating cost is donated,” said Crevier, the foundation’s sole paid employee. “There was no money for something like this.”
Through a grant from the Springfield-based Davis Foundation, a matching grant from a donor, and some help from the poverty-focused Valley Opportunity Council in Holyoke, the AIDS Foundation was able to move into a rented building on Center Street in Chicopee. Crevier had hoped to remain in Springfield — “it’s a hotbed for infection, and it’s accessible for our clients” — but rising property costs downtown were prohibitive.
This happened in the fall, Crevier said. “It was very fast. It was a scary time.”
The AIDS Foundation was founded in 1993, and Crevier is relieved to continue her work there. But the new location has definitely affected the client base, she said. “We work largely with people who have limited income, and many don’t have cars. They rely on the bus and traveling by foot.”
While on Main Street, the clinic had a fairly steady stream of people coming in to talk, learn, pick up free condoms and ask about testing sites. Since the move, the number of walk-ins has “tremendously lessened,” Crevier said. “It’s unfortunate.”
New digs for Howard Street?
Over the past 10 years, the building at 149 Mill Street — formerly the Ring Nursing Home — served as a seasonal dormitory for Six Flags workers and, later, a boarding house for newly-released prisoners from the Hampden County House of Corrections, but it could work as the “new” Howard Street.
Ashe and his staff estimate the annual rent at the Mill Street property would be roughly $1.8 million — an increase of more than $1.1 million from their current annual rent at Howard Street. Retrofitting the new building will cost an additional $7.5 million, Ashe wrote in his mitigation fund application.
The Howard Street property, by contrast, used to be a YWCA, and so the building lends itself to the treatment center’s programming, said Rich McCarthy, the communications director at the sheriff’s department. “We can gather all the residents together for meetings. The offices are good. The gym of the YWCA became our auditorium. It was pretty well-formed to our operation.”
The renovations and enhancements made to the Howard Street property over the decades, McCarthy explained, would need to be made all at once and upfront on the Mill Street property.
“We’re going to do everything in our power to not fold this program,” he said. “It has worked for 30 years. I don’t think there could be any more appropriate use of mitigation money.
Vacating Howard Street by March 31 may not be impossible, McCarthy said, but the center won’t move until it is clear services won’t be disrupted. “We’re not going to be party to the destruction of our own program,” he said.
In addition to meeting with the gaming commission, McCarthy said he will encourage new proposals from community members who may have an alternative development idea. So far, he added, there’s no need for pessimism. “It just requires some grit. We need to dig in.”
State Sen. James T. Welch, a Democrat whose district includes the Howard Street facility, called it “a leader in the state” during an interview last week. Minimizing disruption to this and other health service organizations that fall within the MGM footprint is necessary, he said, because “big changes make big differences to the people who use these programs. It can be a matter of life and death.”
McCarthy took a similar outlook. “I don’t think the casino is looking to cast citizens into a state of homelessness, but that’s what we’re talking about here. I don’t think MGM wants to come into the community in that way.”•
Contact Hunter Styles at hstyles@valleyadvocate.com
