Contractors from Track Crane Service of Westfield, use plywood to cover the roof of a building owned by Hampden Bank on Elm Street in Westfield. Employees from Track Crane Service will be razing the building after city officials took ownership. (File photo by chief photographer Frederick Gore)
- MAYOR DANIEL M. KNAPIK
WESTFIELD – Mayor Daniel M. Knapik announced Wednesday afternoon that the city has purchased the single-story Block Building at 76-84 Elm Street from Hampden Bank. The city and bank had agreed to a purchase price of $145,000.
Knapik said that Truck Crane Services of Fairfield Avenue has been retained by the city and that demolition of the structures should begin early next week.
The city now owns a large section of frontage along Elm Street, property that will be the cornerstone of a new commercial development. That project will include a multi-story parking garage and a bus stop in addition to a mixed-use commercial building.
The project is composed of three elements: a 130,000 square-foot, six-story mixed use commercial building, a 2,000 square-foot transportation component and a five-story, 500-vehicle parking garage.
City Advancement Officer Jeff Daley had informed the Westfield Redevelopment Authority (WRA) Tuesday morning that the sale, stalled because of title issues in the wake of a court decision, was moving forward. The WRA will play a significant role in assembling the property for the project.
The property acquisition was delayed because of a Supreme Judicial Court decision handed down an Oct. 7, 2010, in the U.S. Bank N.A. v. Ibanez case, voided two foreclosure sales where the foreclosing parties did not hold a clear mortgage title. The court found that that the plaintiffs, who were not the original mortgagees, failed to make the required showing that they were the holders of the mortgages at the time of foreclosure. As a result, they did not demonstrate that the foreclosure sales were valid to convey title to the subject properties, and their requests for a declaration of clear title were properly denied.
Daley said that former Community Development Director James Boardman and the property owner signed documents which bridged the deed gap created in the 1980s.
“The attorneys working on this found a loophole in the law after Hampden Bank submitted a title claim that got rejected by their insurer,” Daley said Tuesday, “”We went back to the original agreement. I’m very excited that this worked out the way it did.”
“Paul Liptak (of Truck Crane Services)will remove the asbestos (floor) tiles and demolish the building within the next two weeks, then the environmental company will come in to do the soil mitigation,” Daley said.
The city has secured a $480,200 brownfield grant from the state for environmental mitigation of the soil contaminated with petroleum and lead in an area next to the Arnold Street municipal parking lot, land that will be incorporated into a mixed-use transportation, commercial, retail and residential property development project at the corner of Elm and Arnold streets. That funding was initially used to demolish the city-owned two-story building at the corner of Arnold and Elm streets and to remove windows caulked with an asbestos material as part of the environmental mitigation process.
Daley said the site is contaminated with petroleum and lead, vestiges of the former Professional Building boiler building. The boiler building was located behind the Professional Building which was destroyed in a fire in January of 1952. The boiler building, which provided steam to the office building, was converted to other uses, including a print shop, before it, too, was razed to create more parking behind the Elm Street commercial building.
The WRA will be involved in assembling other parcels into the project site, which, Daley said, will be a “very intense and cumbersome process, because it will involve state and federal funding.”
“There are other properties to be acquired through the WRA, including the Murphy Property (at the former Newberry store site and the Romani Bowling Center,” Daley said.
Knapik said that he and Daley met with Department of Environmental Protection officials Wednesday to inspect oil contamination at the bowling alley location. The present owners are responsible for that cleanup effort, but the city could assume that responsibility if the purchase proceeds forward, similar to the Hampden Bank property environmental remediation.
