Community Corner

Purchase Price of the Broad Street Parkade Comes Down, But Demolition Costs Could Go Up

The Manchester Redevelopment Agency unanimously recommended that the town acquire the Broad Street Parkade property, sending the proposal to the Board of Directors for final approval.

The Manchester Redevelopment Agency found out early Tuesday morning it was getting a better deal than expected on the , but only because costs to demolish the structures on the property could be much greater than initially expected.

As part of a special meeting Tuesday, and after a lengthy confidential executive session in which the deal was discussed, all nine members of the agency voted to send a recommendation to the Board of Directors that it purchase the property for $1.85 million.

The purchase price is $150,000 less than the town had initially negotiated with the private owner of the 19-acre parcel along Broad St. Director of Planning and Economic Development Mark Pellegrini said the reduced price was due to the fact that an independent hazardous materials assessment of the property, conducted by the Windsor-based environmental engineering firm TRC, found that the structures on the property contain “lots and lots of asbestos” and hazardous PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, another classified toxin.

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Pellegrini said the hazardous materials raised the estimated demolition cost of the structures on the property from about $1 million to an estimated $1.9 million to $2.3 million, although he stressed that that figure was a “conservative” high-end estimate and that the town would not know the final cost of the demolition until it bid the project.

, chairman of the redevelopment agency and the owner of Highland Park Market, said the buildings contamination did not come as a total surprise, and did not have the agency rethinking the deal.

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“We knew these buildings, because of the year they were built, were going to be contaminated,” Devanney said.

Built in the late 1960s, the parkade once served as the town’s commercial and retail center, in conjunction with a neighboring shopping plaza on West Middle Turnpike, until the opening of the Shoppes at Buckland Hills mall in 1990 began to draw traffic away from the area. A limited liability company, FNM Manchester, which is comprised primarily of a pair of Boston-based development companies, Berenson Associates and the Wilder Companies, owns the parkade.

An independent of the parcel itself, conducted by the Glastonbury-based environmental consulting and remediation firm GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc., found the land to be clear of any significant “recognized environmental conditions.”

Town Attorney Timothy O’Neil, who also attended Tuesday’s meeting, said the lower purchase price was arrived at after a negotiation with the property owners.

O’Neil said the town only received the revised estimated late last week, and worked aggressively to try and get the owners to come down on the initial price.

“It took a few days before they even came to the conclusion that they were going to have to offer up some kind of concession,” O’Neil said.

Pellegrini said that the town stressed to the Boston companies that it was having “sticker shock” over the new estimate.

When asked if the town tried to negotiate a lower price than the agreed upon $1.85 million, O’Neil replied “always.”

Still, considering the age and condition of the structures on the property, the environmental contaminants and deed restrictions that grant the owner of the neighboring shopping plaza on West Middle Turnpike control over the property’s footprint, Pellegrini asserted that the town was still getting a good deal on the purchase, because all other means of redeveloping the parcel had been exhausted.

“The reason that place has been empty for so long is because all these problems exist,” Pellegrini said. “And these problems will continue to exist until someone comes in and clears those obstacles out, and that’s what the redevelopment agency was tasked with.”

In November of 2009, voters approved a referendum that gave the town the authority to spend up to $8 million on revitalization efforts of the Broad Street area, including the ability to acquire property. 

It is conceivable that the acquisition of the parkade and the demolition of the structures on the property could cost the town at least half that amount, but Pellegrini said the town entered into the process with the understanding that $8 million would not be enough to solve all of Broad Streets problems.

When informed of the new demolition estimates, and the agency’s recommendation that the Board of Directors vote to purchase the property, Mayor Louis Spadaccini said he still supported acquiring the parkade.

The Board of Directors will hold another public hearing on its proposal to purchase the Broad Street Parkade, this time for the cost of $1.85 million, as part of its next meeting, March 1, and Spadaccini said the board could then hold its vote on the purchase of the property that same night. 


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