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Date: 9/19/2023
NORTHAMPTON — The city of Northampton is one step closer to selling the 33 King St. property after the City Council officially approved the request for proposals criteria during their meeting on Sept. 7.
The building, which used to be the probate court, family court and Hampshire County Registry of Deeds, was transferred from the state to the city at the end of this past fiscal year, and has been vacant since 2019. The city is now looking for a bidder to buy the 1.46-acre location and redevelop it into a multistory building that “compliments existing and surrounding, architecture and the residential and business environment.”
According to the RFP, the city is asking for a minimum bid of $2.5 million and the expectation is that the current building will be torn down.
The City Council’s Committee on Finance and Committee on Community Resources conducted a joint meeting a day before the Sept. 7 council meeting to go over language in the RFP. The two committees eventually sent a positive recommendation back to the full council, but not before discussing specific criteria that needed to be clarified, including criteria around housing.
The city is using a point-based scoring system within the RFP to determine which projects from bidders are considered more advantageous to the city. For example, a developer who can clearly show a 10-year financial benefit for the city with their project is considered “highly advantageous” and receives more points.
Another way a proposed project can receive a lot of points is if it is a project that includes 60-70% to 40-30% split of market-rate housing and affordable housing. Projects with housing ratios that have lower percentages of market-rate housing will receive fewer points.
During the council’s Aug. 17 meeting, as well as the joint finance and community resources meeting on Sept. 6, Ward 5 Councilor Alex Jarrett and Ward 1 Councilor Stan Moulton both asked for the RFP to encourage more attainable and workforce housing as possibilities for the property.
“We would like to see some workforce housing that would count in the scoring,” Moulton said, during the original Aug. 17 meeting. “I think that’s very important.”
A few people spoke during public comment at the Sept. 6 joint meeting, including Sam Scoppettone, a senior associate at Civico Development, a real estate investment and development group based in Worcester.
Scoppettone argued that the minimum bid of $2.5 million was too high.
“If you set a really high minimum bid, there’s a danger people won’t respond to this RFP, and then we’re back at square one again, and there could be years of delay,” Scoppettone said. “I don’t want to see the building continue to sit vacant.”
At-Large City Councilor Marissa Elkins, who is also a member of community resources, strongly disagreed with the sentiment that there should not be a minimum bid for the property, arguing that the city needs to use a “tremendous” number of resources to vet bids.
“The way we find out what the market will bear is by putting [the property] on the market,” Elkins said. “I profoundly disagree with the idea of not going forward with a minimum bid.”
When Northampton sells the property, the city will receive half of whatever the bid is, and the state will receive the other half.
During the joint committee meeting, Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra said that some of the money from the eventual sale could be used for future municipal projects like safety redesign at Northampton High School, as well as mitigation plans for the construction period of the Picture Main Street project.
“We would like to have some pot of money to work on ways in which the community can come together to support our businesses and support downtown during that time,” Sciarra said of the latter possibility.
The deadline for bid proposals is Nov. 30.