Politics & Government

Board of Directors Approves $1.85 Million Purchase of Broad Street Parkade

The town could close on the blighted 19-acre parcel along Broad Street by the end of the month, officials say, and demolition efforts could begin by the summer.

It’s been discussed and debated for so long, that Tuesday’s unanimous decision by the Board of Directors to purchase the for $1.85 million was practically anti-climactic.

“I believe that controlling this property and removing the buildings creates the potential for quality development there in the future,” said Mayor Louis Spadaccini, a Republican member of the board, as he offered his endorsement of the proposal. “It will clean up an area of town that has long been a blight. You can’t let blight perpetuate in the center of a community without it affecting the image of the community.”

After a brief public hearing, and some minor administrative maneuvering, all nine members of the board voted to purchase the property from the Boston-based limited liability company, FNM Manchester, as part of its regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday.

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Negotiations between the Manchester Redevelopment Agency, the town body tasked with the hurdle of redeveloping the Broad Street area of town, and FNM Manchester, owned primarily by Berenson Associates and the Wilder Companies, two development companies that manage and lease properties throughout the country, had been ongoing for several years.

Members of the agency told the board Tuesday that when negotiations began, FMN Manchester were seeking upwards of $4.5 million for the 19-acre property that houses a large, vacant shopping plaza, but through about two years of “intense” negotiations, the agency managed to get the sellers down to $2 million.

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The price was dropped to $1.85 million in late February when an  found the buildings on the site to contain asbestos and PCBs, or polychlorinated biphenyls, another classified toxin. Because of the toxins, the Windsor-based environmental engineering firm, TRC, estimated that demolition of the structures would cost from $1.9 million to $2.3 million. An independent of the parcel itself, conducted by the Glastonbury-based environmental consulting and remediation firm GZA GeoEnvironmental, Inc., found the land that the buildings sit on to be clear of any significant “recognized environmental conditions.”

“Every seller has different motivation. Some sellers are not willing to listen; they are not willing to negotiate. They want what they want. This is such a seller,” said Barbara Weinberg, a member of the redevelopment agency, in response to an inquiry by Republican board member Dennis Brenner wondering if the town could have negotiated a better purchase price because of the contaminants.

“Could we have made a better deal with this seller at this time?” Weinberg told Brenner. “I don’t think so. They have the finances to outlast all of us… We need that cancer gone. We need to cut it out.”

Known as the Broad Street Parkade, the vacant retail spaces at the plaza that comprise 324, 330, 334 and 340 Broad St., once served as the town’s retail and commercial Mecca from their construction in the late 1960s to the early 1990s. But the opening of the Shoppes at Buckland Hills mall in 1990 began to draw many of the larger stores away from the area, and gradually the Broad Street Parkade became vacant, deteriorated and “dark,” as many residents now refer to it as. The town worked out at an arrangement with FNM Manchester to use the site as a dumping ground for excess snow this winter.

Further complicating development efforts of the parkade is a deed restriction over the parcel by two neighboring landowners that require them to approve any development of the parcel “outside of the existing building footprint.”

“That’s the reason that this property has sat vacant for many, many years, because the private sector doesn’t have a solution for it,” said General Manager Scott Shanley.

Members of the redevelopment agency have repeatedly told the board that they have had “conversations” with the neighboring property owners, and that they seem amenable to the type of high-density residential development with limited first-floor retail opportunities that the town is hoping to foster. Although Shanley said there have been no contracts signed with any of the neighboring property owners.

Deputy Mayor Leo Diana, a Democratic member of the board, said he believed that residents endorsed the board’s appropriation of the property when they voted to approve a referendum in November of 2009 that gave the town the authority to spend up to $8 million on revitalization efforts in the area, including the ability to acquire property.

“I think our town does deserve better. We’ve had this black eye in town for 18-plus years,” Diana said. “We’ve reached the point where we really have to do something now. I think the taxpayers have spoken. I think the referendum was loud and clear.”

If the demolition estimates hold, the town would spend about $4 million to purchase and clear the site, leaving an additional $4 million remaining for other improvements in the Broad Street area. Expanding the streetscape for pedestrians and beautifying and connecting Bigelow Brook and Center Springs Park have also been discussed as potential improvements to the area.

Mark Pellegrini, the town's director of planning and economic development, said the town would likely close on the parkade before the end of the month, and begin soliciting bids for the demolition contract in early April. Pellegrini said the demolition of the parkade would probably begin over the summer, but had no estimate for how long it would take to complete.

“I wouldn’t want to even guess,” he said. “It’s going to be a while, because you’ve got to get all that stuff out of there.”

After that, Pellegrini said, there was still a lot of work that needed to be done on the Broad Street area of town.


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