Mike Mulligan and his steam boiler

Maybe Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel was a guy kind of book for kids. It was my favorite, and I think I still have a copy of it somewhere in a dusty corner of the attic. Mike and his perpetually smiling anthropomorphic steam shovel, lost in a cloud of dust, digging frantically away to finish the cellar hall for the new Pottersville town hall. Mulligan and I were alike, long on energy and a little short on organization. Mulligan and his old shovel won the bet and the contract and finished the job before sundown, but they found themselves stranded in the bottom of a very deep cellar hole with no way out. They had forgotten to dig a ramp. But the day is saved by a little kid who has a bright idea of leaving the steam shovel in place, making it the new boiler for the school, and giving Mike, who isn't getting any younger, the job as custodian. The final frame shows Mike in his rocking chair next to his trackless steam shovel, enjoying his twilight years.

This morning I went down to the cellar and admired our brand new bright red H.B. Smith boiler. It was warm and toasty in the cellar because all the pipes are temporarily without insulation, and if I had had a rocking chair handy I would have dragged it downstairs, got a cup of coffee and a crossword puzzle and whiled away a lazy Sunday morning, listening to its quiet roar. I admit it, we had neglected our steam boiler, and missed the last two yearly cleanings, and this year the repairman threw down his tools in disgust, and said no, it's got to go. Frozen and rusted bolts, a buckling clean-out door, and bondoed junctions. A machine all ready to gas us one night with a carbon monoxide leak.

And if the old boiler had to go, the asbestos had to go, and now everything is gone, and our bank account is a lot lighter. But the new boiler is a beaut, and they left behind the real prize, the rusty old boiler that I am busy dismantling. Now it is wrench work, later on it will be sledgehammer work. And when I get tired out and in need of a change in strategy, I can always sit down next to my new boiler whose builder's plate still says Westfield but is made in Ohio and have a cup of coffee and think about what I am doing.

This was the old boiler this morning first thing, after I stripped the housing and controls off it and started hitting it with a sledge hammer. Hit number five there was a dent, hit number six a piece of the wall dropped away. The wall is thin, and cast iron is brittle. More brittle than people, thank god. Now its in little pieces ready to go to Locust Street. Demolishing it ourselves saved us $200.

We need a mid-course correction on Village Hill

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.

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.