City Spending: Build New, Build Now
by Bill Dusty
With MassDevelopment’s purchase of the former federal building on Main Street in downtown Springfield, so begins a redevelopment of that property that will consume millions of dollars and eventually bring in a new list of tenants, including the School Department, Baystate Health, and the federal government’s General Services Administration.
The move of the School Department’s headquarters to the 28-year-old building drew harsh criticism from Springfield City Councilor Timothy Rooke these past few months. Rooke has been arguing that the City of Springfield – and the taxpayers who are funding the move – could be flushing millions of dollars down the drain in their zeal to both move the School Dept.’s headquarters and rehabilitate the former federal building in as short a time as possible.
But there is underlying story here that no one in particular seems entirely interested in. And that is the fact that the “old” federal building is really only 28 years old.
Sound familiar?
That’s because the “old” Basketball Hall of Fame, which is now the new LA Fitness center located on West Columbus Avenue, was less than 20 years old when it was deemed inadequate. There is also a list of other not-so-old buildings in the city, including some school buildings, that still have years ahead of them but for whatever reason have lacked that certain “pizzazz” that city planners and civic activists like to see in the buildings that house their special interests. (U.S. Rep. Richie Neal led the drive for an all-new federal building, with some speculating he had dreams of one day seeing his name affixed to its front facade.)
And so we spend our money to make their desires a reality.
Take school buildings. The argument is routinely made that we need to build brand-new schools for our children because the old buildings – some of which are admittedly aged a hundred years – are unsafe and entirely inadequate for the purposes of education. Everyone nods their heads in agreement with this assertion, and then we all obediently fork over our tax dollars for the construction of new buildings from scratch.
Then something interesting happens to these old, “unsafe” buildings. They are sold for a pittance (sometimes given away) and the parties that purchase them then re-hab them for a fraction of the “build from scratch” cost we are paying. And in some cases, too, something really amazing happens: People actually move into these old buildings and live in them.
So the buildings that were once deemed entirely outdated and unsafe to teach our children in have now become the places where some these same children eat, sleep and host their birthday parties.
To date, the old Chestnut Junior High School in the city’s North End remains vacant and crumbling – a victim, says its developer, Miramar Real Estate Managment (which got the property from the city for free) of the bad economy. Miramar plans on converting the building into market rate apartments – when it can get a partner to help out. The Chestnut School was closed years ago after racking up 691 code violations. That’s a lot of violations. But how was it able to get that many? Hasn’t the city ever heard of something called preventive maintenance?
Rather than fix up the old junior high school, the city and state instead chipped in millions in taxpayer dollars to build an entirely new building. And so we now have the Chestnut Accelerated Middle School – which is located on Plainfield Street (duh!). Yes, our leaders could have re-habbed the old Chestnut Junior High for a fraction of the millions the state and city are currently dishing out for all the “stimulus” construction going on these days, and which is currently clogging up our city’s streets with traffic jams. But instead, they neglected the old building, let it decay into code violation heaven, and traded it in for a new lot.
Some supporters of what I call the “Build New, Build Now” philosophy argue that the city’s population demographics have changed and that we need to relocate some schools away from heavily congested areas. But this is really just a red herring for the real reason we want our schools both new and large: We really, really want things that are both new and large.
So now we have brand-new government buildings, brand-new sidewalks, brand-new streets, and brand-new tax bills. And the city of Springfield is still impoverished. Darn it.
By the way, get ready to hear rumblings about a new Central High School. The “old” one passed 20 years old three years ago.
What a hag.
6 Responses for “City Spending: Build New, Build Now”
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My blood boils every time I look at the new federal building– it was somehow “too expensive” to build to the LEED standards– which certainly would have saved money over the long haul AND set a great example.
When we D) build new schools, I doubt they will be built to harness the new kinetic energy technologies, which use the energy of children’s feet in the hallways and up and downstairs to produce energy which is then used to help power the school.
Personally, I believe that all new construction that uses taxpaers’ dollars should be required to meet LEED standards.
This same sort of thinking (and building) happens a lot with individual homebuyers. There are many gorgeous, well-maintained, structurally sound old homes in Springfield that some potential home buyers ignore due to perceived maintenance issues.
Older buildings, both homes and commercial/institutional buildings (like Tech HS, ahem) were built to last and often have fewer maintenance problems than those built in the last 30 years, which sometimes feature designed obsolescence.
My old house (137 years old) is sound as a pound, but I have friends with homes built in the 1960s that have lots of structural issues (cheap drywall walls, flimsy windows, cracked foundations….).
One of Springfield’s great strengths is our affordable housing stock, and one of the best sectors of our housing is those great old homes.
Wow, Bill, you’re starting to sound like a preservationist! You make many excellent points.
Everyone totes “preventive” especially in medicine.
Why not take care of what we have? Then Neal would loose his chance of a name plate and Sarno his promise from Neal…..job security….
One cause of the ‘build new” craze was the law governing state reimbursement rates. The state would pay up to 90% for a new school, but no money was available at all if you rehabbed an old one.
Sound stupid? Yes, but the legislature purposely did that as a payoff to the construction industry, which makes a lot more money if they build from scratch rather than just rehab. School projects are also a Christmas tree of contracts for politically connected industries, and the bigger the project, the more numerous the contracts. Unions like those big projects too, they need more workers.
In Springfield all the modern schools came in grossly over the original estimates, and anyone who complained was accused of being “against the children who are our future.” The debt still to be paid off for those schools is part of what has left Springfield finacially crippled, and the full story behind Springfield’s modern school construction program is a major scandal still to be exposed.
What a racket, ain’t it, Tommy .