A confession: In the days that Hospital Hill still had a hospital on it, and design aspects seemed as if they could be talked about at public hearings, I got over-involved fighting to save Old Main. Too many meetings. Ask my wife. But even in the thick of it, I wondered if I and other people were being obstructionist: was I involved just because Pat Goggins was the kingpin of the thing and getting about 98% of the commissions on property transfers? MassDevelopment is not a bunch of goons; maybe with Old Main gone and its so-called stigma gone and the old fountain safely crated up in some warehouse, people and industries would flood in, and the city would be better for it.
But it is now 2009, and Old Main is long gone, and many, many millions of state and federal dollars have been put into infrastructure up there. On December 10, 2002 MassDevelopment split up the bulk of the land north of Prince Street into lots for resale. 34 lots, constituting about 34 acres. There are streets up there, but most of them are empty of life. Phase two, which was the area adjacent to Paradise Pond and the Smith playing fields was left undivided. That was the area they were going to build big houses on big lots with views of Paradise Pond.
Six years has gone by, and the developer has had a chance to do his stuff untroubled by pesky community activists. The houses that we saw in all the many plans MassDevelopment has circulated over the years at CAC meetings are now here. Three of them.
Us community activists can relax, I think. Enough time has gone by so that the city can ask, well how is it going? Not very well. Village Hill looks like a classic taxpayer-funded boondoggle. The original architect that drew up the plans, Calthorpe, wanted to keep part of Old Main, and put a hotel up at the crest of the hill. Those plans all disappeared because the downtown business people didn't want anything up on the hill that would compete with downtown. The small shopping center that was to go into Prince Street also disappeared to accomodate Kollmorgen. People and industries are not flooding in.
I went down today to talk to the tax collector's office and to see Joan Sarafin at the Assessors office. Because MassDevelopment is a nonprofit, it doesn't pay taxes on land until it goes to private owners. So you got this huge swath of Northampton north of Prince Street, about 60-odd acres close to Smith College and downtown. Prime location. Because the private homes planned for this area aren't selling for one reason or another, no money is coming in. The townhouses, most of them subsidized are up and mostly occupied, but the 64 and 72 Musante Drive owned by the Village at Hospital Hill LLC haven't paid their taxes for this fiscal year. I count 36 lots north of Prince and only 4 of them are on the tax rolls, totalling about 6.5 acres.
So the new industry isn't coming in to beef up the tax rolls, the high end houses are not selling. We're keeping Kollmorgen, but there is no vital center to this new community. The overall strategy doesn't seem to be working. The development all along has been Pat Goggins's baby. When he is working on a small canvas, his developments work well, when he gets ambitious, there is disaster. His last big development was Cummington Farms, which bankrupted people and lost Heritage Bank millions. But Pines Edge worked, Ice Pond worked. He and his construction people at Wright builders made a bundle of money at Ice Pond. Wright and Goggins have a virtual monopoly on residential development on the hill and make big contributions to the Mayor's war chest every time she runs, but Hospital Hill is starting to look like a venture that eats development and construction money. 100% of nothing is nothing.
The initial residential activity on Village Hill proper were Cummunity Builders buildings, which were subsidized and half low income. Village Hill has worked a small wonder for low and moderate income renters. The private homes are right next door on truly tiny lots. I think the builder is trying to emulate the homes on Massasoit Street or other upscale Northampton streets. But Massasoit Street is not Olander Drive. Its closest neighbors are subsidized units. And with no stores in the plan, low income housing next door, the houses are not selling. And the truly tiny lots on Olander are nothing short of bizarre. If you're going to pay $700,000 for a house, you want some set-back, some side yard. Pat Goggins thought, like most realtors, that it was location, location location, stupid. Right next to Smith College and walking distance from downtown.
But a refurbished Old Main would have had real views. Take a look at that painting in the Smith Art museum done from the vantage point of the roof of Old Main. Ok, 51 Olander Drive has an ok view from upstairs, but not much else for its selling price of $637,855. It’s a modest 3 bedroom 2 ½ bath house on a truly tiny lot.
51 Olander is the model home in Morningside, the first installation of 11 what were slated to be market-rate homes for sale by Goggins Real Estate and Wright Builders. Right now there are three homes built, one has been sold to a private owner, and this one was sold to an LLC controlled by the realtor. They have been on the market since April of 2008. While there is frenetic activity next door in the complex of attached townhouses , it’s awfully quiet on Olander Drive where an expanse of very expensive dirt is awaiting the bulldozer. MassDevelopment has spent a lot of state money and its own money on infrastructure development, including razing more than a half million square feet of buildings, many of them historic, and building roads. A lot of their land is also under conservation restrictions. It is trying to recoup their investment. They sold Wright Builders the land under the first three homes, about six-tenths of an acre. Their land costs were about $420,000 an acre, if my math is right.
So now that the real estate market is cool, it's hard to imagine that these homes are going to move. The plan mixes market rate with supported housing, there's no corner market or 7-11 in the plans, and the homes are not custom built, it is a subdivision with a A-B-A-B look, and usually for this kind of money you get a big lawn and space to put in a swimming pool.
51 Olander is the model home in Morningside, the first installation of 11 what were slated to be market-rate homes for sale by Goggins Real Estate and Wright Builders. Right now there are three homes built, one has been sold to a private owner, and this one was sold to an LLC controlled by the realtor. They have been on the market since April of 2008. While there is frenetic activity next door in the complex of attached townhouses , it’s awfully quiet on Olander Drive where an expanse of very expensive dirt is awaiting the bulldozer. MassDevelopment has spent a lot of state money and its own money on infrastructure development, including razing more than a half million square feet of buildings, many of them historic, and building roads. A lot of their land is also under conservation restrictions. It is trying to recoup their investment. They sold Wright Builders the land under the first three homes, about six-tenths of an acre. Their land costs were about $420,000 an acre, if my math is right.
So now that the real estate market is cool, it's hard to imagine that these homes are going to move. The plan mixes market rate with supported housing, there's no corner market or 7-11 in the plans, and the homes are not custom built, it is a subdivision with a A-B-A-B look, and usually for this kind of money you get a big lawn and space to put in a swimming pool.
For more pictures of the area click here . At some point the Planning Board has to blow a whistle and ask what is going on. Ask MassDevelopment how this development is working out for the taxpayers of Northampton. Maybe in twenty years, the hill is going to fill up. But maybe another developer will have the land by then. And I will be dead and buried. Well, not buried. Maybe my wife can give the urn to Garson Fields and ask him to buzz the hill and dump the ashes out. Take that, MassDevelopment.
