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MassDevelopment In The News
Neighborhood's Prospects No Longer Heading South
May 28, 2007: Banker & Tradesman
A nonprofit group wants to develop the former Crompton & Knowles Loom Works building in Worcester into condominiums or a mixed-use facility.
Worcester’s gritty Main South neighborhood is making a comeback.
While crime and derelict properties continue to plague its mean streets, improvements are slowly revitalizing one of the city’s toughest sections. Now, the state has stepped in with a pilot program to help bring abandoned contaminated properties back onto the tax rolls.
Main South Community Development Corp., a nonprofit developer, recently received a $350,000 grant from MassDevelopment. The money will be used to remove asbestos from the former Crompton & Knowles Loom Works, a 125,000-square-foot structure that the nonprofit purchased for $1.5 million. Depending upon market conditions, the vacant brick building could become 109 condominiums or a mixed-use development that would include offices, retail space and apartments.
"MassDevelopment funding is a huge piece of getting this moving quickly rather than cautiously," said J. Stephen Teasdale, Main South CDC’s executive director. "If we jump-start this building, other things will come up around it. Someone has to take the risk, but it’s difficult to proceed without state subsidies."
Financial assistance for above ground remediation is a first for the Bay State. Typically, state and federal agencies fund the cleanup of brownfields – industrial or commercial properties that are abandoned or underused and usually environmentally contaminated, which are often considered as potential sites for redevelopment. But the removal of asbestos and lead paint can be a deal killer on projects because the cost to eliminate dangerous materials from large commercial properties can reach $1 million or more.
The state’s effort to include funds for interior remediation could be the incentive that developers need to turn abandoned buildings into housing or mixed-use developments.
Robert L. Culver, president and chief executive officer of MassDevelopment – the state’s economic development agency – credited state Sen. Edward M. Augustus Jr., a Worcester Democrat, for securing $1.2 million of the $30 million in brownfields funds available to developers for the removal of asbestos and lead paint.
"There was a groundswell to include above-ground remediation as part of the grant program," said Culver. "We heard that we were getting checkered remediation without it."
Seven other projects received MassDevelopment grants. The largest amounts distributed were $130,000 for the redevelopment of the 66,525-square-foot H.M. Francis Commercial Bank in Fitchburg into apartments and commercial space; $130,000 for the Hayes Building in Haverhill, a 38,800-square-foot facility that will become a mix of 57 affordable and market-rate apartments with ground-level retail and commercial space; $120,000 for the Clark Biscuit Apartments in North Adams, a 25,000-square-foot building that will become 43 units of affordable housing; $120,000 for River Lofts at the 53,000-square-foot former Weir Stone Co. building that will become 44 affordable and market-rate condominiums, parking and green space; and $86,000 for 119 units of mixed-income housing at Blessed Sacrament Church in Jamaica Plain.
Taking a Risk
Like many older Massachusetts communities, Main South faltered in the 1960s when dozens of manufacturing plants were shuttered. Residents who once worked in the factories couldn’t afford their mortgages and homeowners simply walked away. By the late 1970s, abandoned properties littered the landscape and arsonists destroyed scores of homes and businesses over the next decade.
In the mid-1980s, residents and Clark University officials recognized the need to save a decaying neighborhood. Clark helped create Main South CDC and guaranteed a $1 million line of credit for the nonprofit group to restore neglected rental units.
As a result, the $32.5 million Kilby/Gardner/Hammond Neighborhood Revitalization Project, named for the streets in the center of the district, was launched. In a city disproportionately affected by blight, crime and poverty, the project symbolizes hope that a neigborhood can be saved.
The project has succeeded in transforming a 30-acre site into new homes for low- and moderate-income familes. So far, 34 vacant lots have made way for new homes. The pastel-colored duplexes are a far cry from the burned-out triple-deckers and trash-strewn lots that littered the landscape. A $9 million Boys & Girls Club recently opened on 7.5 acres after blighted and abandoned factories were razed to make way for the new facility.
Of the more than 12,000 people who live within a square mile of Main South, 44 percent are Hispanic, according to U.S. Census data.
"If we do this right, the neighborhood will become a little bit of a destination place with cafés and other attractions," said Teasdale. "Shrewsbury Street has an Italian flavor, but this could be a Latino quarter rather than the run-down places on Main Street. This could be more upscale."
Teasdale refused to take all the credit for the revitalization effort, saying instead that the renaissance stems from a partnership with Clark University, the Boys & Girls and the city of Worcester. The university, as well as Worcester’s city manager and police chief, did not return phone calls by press time.
The $20 million Crompton & Knowles Loom Works project will include a makeover of the cobblestone street and new lighting. The company once employed 2,800 workers at its peak in 1950, according to "Worcester," a postcard history book by Frank Morrill.
Of the dozens of Worcester firms making machines for the textile industry, the Crompton & Knowles Loom Works was the largest and most successful. George Crompton and Lucius Knowles each launched successful loom-making companies. Their rival firms merged in 1897. After buying out specialized manufacturers, the company boasted that they made "a loom for every fabric."
Through the mid-20th century, Crompton & Knowles dominated the market for fancy looms worldwide. But by the 1950s, the textile industry faded due to competition, and plants in New England closed as a result. Since then, Worcester officials have been trying to figure out how to re-use or replace the manufacturing plants with housing or commercial space.
While there is another condominium project in the neighborhood, University Park Lofts – which offers condos from $134,900 to $244,900 – private developers have shied away from the neighborhood.
The housing slump has hit Worcester hard. Condo sales fell to 178 for the first four months of 2007, down from a record high of 218 for the same period a year ago – an 18.3 percent decline, according to statistics from The Warren Group, parent company of Banker & Tradesman. As a result, of the 37 units at University Park that went on sale late last year, only five have sold.
Still, Teasdale said he is convinced that more private investment is coming.
"Someone has to take the risk and we’re able to do that as a nonprofit," he said. "But if our building succeeds, we expect others will follow. Across the street is a vacant city-owned building that the city would give away to the right developer."
© Copyright 2007 Banker & Tradesman.
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