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Photo by Len Emery The Black River side of the buildings at 9-11 Main Street, white building on right and the flakeboard building green and brick building on left are potential targets of the blighted building program in Springfield.
Published February 24, 2016 in the Rutland Herald
Springfield targets two buildings
By SUSAN SMALLHEER
Staff Writer
SPRINGFIELD — The Springfield Select Board took an important first step Monday night in its developing campaign to help revitalize downtown Springfield by targeting two buildings on the Black River that many consider eyesores.
One of the two buildings, 5-6 Main Street, which sits in back of the old Springfield Bakery building, is owned by Chris Mason.
The other building, 10 River St., known locally as the Plywood Palace for its construction material of choice, is owned by Bill Hanley.
Town Manager Tom Yennerell said Mason is interested in selling the large white building along the river while Hanley is not interested in selling.
But both buildings, according to the objectives adopted formally by the Select Board Monday night, would become official projects of the town, with the goal of either tearing down the buildings or making them active and vibrant again with the help of state and federal grants.
Yenerell said Tuesday the Mason building would be torn down, under the preliminary plan, “to create more visual access to the Black River,” and either create more green space in downtown Springfield or more parking. It would also be part of the town’s ‘riverwalk’ project,” he said, and connect a walking path to 100 River St., the former Fellows Gear Shaper building, now full of doctors’ offices.
The Hanley building, which decades ago burned, was replaced partially with a plywood structure. It could hopefully be made to look much better, the manager said. He said since Hanley doesn’t want to sell the building, which still has an operating hydroelectric station in its basement, the town wants to find a partner for Hanley to revitalize the building.
“We’ll work with the owner to facilitate some improvements and hopefully bring in a partner,” Yennerell said.
The building, which is now painted brown, has in the past couple of years been dressed up with several large colorful murals by local artist Jamie Townsend.
“Bill doesn’t want his building taken down, but he’s open to it being developed,” said Carol Lighthall, executive director of Springfield On The Move, who attended the Monday night strategic planning meeting.
Selectman George McNaughton said that the town wanted to “make these productive buildings.”
Select Board Chairman Kristi Morris said he was concerned about naming the buildings publicly that the town wanted to target, but others said the “cat was out of the bag” and the building owners already knew of the town’s interest.
“They can go out and try and double their price. That’s OK, they’ll have to deal with the fire marshal,” McNaughton said.
Tom Kennedy, executive director of the Southern Windsor County Regional Planning Commission, said that brownfield contamination issues would undoubtedly surface at both spots. He said his organization had grant funds to help with the assessment and eventual cleanup.
Another building that the town has an eye on is the Woolson Block, which was sold at tax sale last summer to the Vermont Housing Trust, in conjunction with the Springfield Housing Authority. The period that owner E.J. Cully has to redeem the building is still open, and the building’s taxes are overdue.
http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20160224/NEWS02/160229744
"both buildings, according to the objectives adopted formally by the Select Board Monday night, would become official projects of the town," blah, blah, blah, blah .................
ReplyDeleteNever happen, If one nail fell in the water the state would shut down the operation because a fish might choke on it.
ReplyDeleteThis is a turnaround point for Springfield. Instead of waiting for Superman to deliver us from our ills, the Selectboard has exercised initiative which would never have been permitted under the regime of the Precision Valley shop owners. Nunc dimmitus, Domine!!!
ReplyDeleteCase you have not noticed Chuck but the shop owners left a long time ago. These buildings have been eyesores for decades. I guess those union workers who bankrupted the businesses had no interest in fixing up the town. They appear to be very content with their children living on the dole and becoming drug addicts though.
Delete12:18, to prove your allegation, all you have to do is list what the Selectboard devised for Springfield since, say, 1990. The fact is, Springfield's culture up to now has been to wait for someone in authority to tell us what they are going to do for us. It's good to see democracy reviving in town.
DeleteChuck you have great ideas about spending other peoples' money and destroying their assets for your liberal failing agendas. You said the "Selectboard has exercised initiative which would never have been permitted under the regime of the Precision Valley shop owners". The shop owners for the most part were long gone before 1990. Springfield's culture since the demise of the shops has been to go on the dole and raise a litter of dope addicts. I don't see any meaningful change. It's easy to destroy someone else's assets when you didn't earn the money for the assets yourself. Springfield still can't even deal with the Park Street school that anyone with a brain knows that it should have been demolished many years ago.
DeleteSorry, 11:01, but you obviously mistake me for somebody who works on Wall Street.
DeleteCultural values do not shift overnight, or even in a decade.
When there is no hope, substance abuse offers a refuge. When we decide that we can do things differently, we are acting on hope. We create hope!
I think we can do things differently, and the select board with its development of a strategic plan has just confirmed that.
The Woolson Block is mentioned at the end of the article. In my opinion, we don't need any more public housing in the downtown area which is exactly what the SHA intends to do with it with the concurrence of our selectmen and town manager. Other taxpayers in town need to speak up on this issue!
ReplyDeleteDo you have a better plan, and funding, for the Woolson Block?
Delete12:37: I did not offer a solution, I stated my opinion. As a long time resident and taxpayer in this town, I don't think placing more public housing in the Square will advance the selectmen's current plans to improve the downtown area. Springfield has some very difficult economic problems to deal with and I don't have and certainly didn't insinuate in my comment that I am the know-all that is going to solve them.
DeleteLow-income housing does not mean we get trailer trash. What it means is that people are able to avoid the crushing stresses that come from paying up to 80 percent of their income to have a crumbling, smelly, rat-infested, roach-ridden hellhole to live in.
DeleteWhen a person moves from such a situation to a far better one, they have one less obstacle to leading a fulfilling life. And a smart community makes sure that they have opportunities to work toward the better life that they want.
As I understand what has been said, the State and Federal money is more available for redevelopment projects involving housing funds, which is how the theater was renovated. It is correct that subsidized housing is a problem downtown, however, it is more of a problem when it is privately controlled in the form of Section 8 housing which is what has been in the Woolson Block. The Housing Authority, although not perfect, is fairly good at doing background checks and removing problematic tenants. The Selectboard appears to have been insistent that the Housing Authority be the oversight entity. Right now, I would agree with the Selectboard that this is the best route to get the building fixed up, the storefronts occupied, and the few remaining problematic tenants evicted.
DeleteChuck exists in a victimology fantasyland where the streets are paved with monies confiscated from the pockets of the working man and woman; the state-controlled media is censored to permit only the lamest, most outlandish, and laughable of excuses to serve as mock legitimacy for the chronic under-achievements and addictions of the malingering minions preying on the hard-earned property and earnings of others; and the students in our schools are dumbed down and demotivated from seeking greatness. It’s Chuck’s recipe for a social stew of perpetual leftovers, louts, and losers that subsist in a make believe nirvana where they become royalty resplendent in rags and relishing their power to punish and penalize anyone perceived as being better than they are. And in that fantasy, Chuck dreams of being crowned their king, where he, as merciful monarch, shall dispense a steady stream of medication to keep them mollified and pablum to mask their true plight. Chuck is seeking a “Spongeworthy Springfield”!
DeleteYou ever thought of becoming a writer?
DeleteSorry, 12:18, but we're all in this together!
ReplyDeleteIf you despise 14-year-old mothers, you're dumping on the mother of Jesus; if you loathe peasants, you sneer at Isaac Newton's parents; if you sneer at coal miners, you're spitting on John Brasher; if you disparage illiterate men who work for subsistence wages, you're dumping on the father of John Snow. The children of those parents invented a world-class religion, discovered the basic laws of physics, invented a process that made quantum advances possible in astronomy and saved millions from death by cholera.
While there undoubtedly are adults in Springfield who are limited (the prison is full of them) against whom we must protect ourselves, it is in our best interests to encourage the hopes and aspirations of all, no matter how far down the ladder, because good things will happen.
Wow. Beautiful.
DeleteIt is difficult to differentiate between those in unfortunate circumstances and those gaming the system. One of the ways of making that distinction is paying attention to whether the Town is working on projects that provide employment and uplift the Town, or whether Social Agencies are doling out funds. There seems to be something to be said for raising the minimum wage as that helps the working poor, but not those gaming the system. There is a welfare problem in Springfield.
DeleteActually, James, it's not difficult to differentiate. The real problem is that very few of us want to understand poverty.
DeleteEverybody, even the poor, would benefit from taking the "Bridges out of Poverty" course offered by Prudence Pease.
Pease, the eldest child in a rootless family, was dumped on the streets at 12 years old. By age 19, she was a biker moll with a $500-a-day heroin habit. When she was ten days from her due date, her boy friend said, "You gotta get off this bike." Then he left.
At term, she was 103 lbs, easily 20 pounds underweight for her size and her pregnancy. By age 3, her child was doing no better than spending his entire day in a corner of a two-room apartment shared by six people, and that was when Social Services in Vermont finally intervened.
She told them to f*k off.
So, how did she wind up kicking her habit, getting the nutritional and remedial educational resources that saved her child, getting her GED and then her associate's degree, eventually becoming a highly-regarded assistant judge?
Everybody who knows of somebody at the bottom of the ladder ought to take the course. It's an eye-opening two days.
Chuck these are admirable success stories. We also have people drawing State child assistance while serving a drug mules and hosting dealer boyfriends. These are the generation to generation welfare legacies that need to be broken. These are the people who have learned to game the system.
ReplyDeleteJames, a very well-known and highly regarded 20-year study of the culture of poverty on the Hawaiian island of Maui (known as the Warner-Smith study) determined some very important facts about poverty. We can use those facts to reduce chronic poverty to an almost unimaginably low level.
Delete1. About one-third of all children born into and raised in poverty escape it even if deprived of social services.
2. They escaped simply by the luck of being able to have the potential for five survival traits and the even better luck of developing that potential.
3. Two of them were the ability to trust their feelings enough to recognize when they face a problem, and the second one was to know that there was always someone there to help them.
4. Since the two-thirds of children who don't escape unaided for the most part have those same potentials, assistance from outside sources can help them.
Clearly Pru Pease was one of those, and we can-- if we want to make the commitment-- help other children like her, and from a very early age, no less. Of course, it's not going to be a magic carpet ride.
It is true as you describe that we have parents (usually single) drawing state or federal assistance while serving as drug mules and hosting dealer boyfriends. (In my quarter-century plus as a health outreach worker, I met my share.) However, there are reasons that they do that, causes which have to be dealt with and often can be successfully dealt with.
Just to give one example-- the woman who believes that her boy friend beats her up because he loves her. For her, this is a perfectly normal thought. How can she change enough to throw him out or rat him out? First, she has to learn to trust her feelings enough to realize that being beaten hurts too much. Second, she has to learn it's okay to want to make a major change in her life. Third, she has to learn that her opinions count as much as if not more than his. Fourth, she has to learn he can't control her choices and her friends. Fifth, she has to learn that she can trust someone else to help her. Sixth, she has to learn that even though her choices will cause her great disruption in her life, they will bring her the results she wants.
If the resources are not there for the parent who needs them, that parent will be likely to continue to "game the system," because he/she has always known that is "normal" behavior.
We cannot change them simply by punishing them. If we don't provide the tools they need to make the changes they know that they want to make, they cannot change, and we will continue to have the same problem as you describe it. When it comes to breaking the cycle of poverty, it truly takes a village.