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Morse and O’Connell differ on details of land deal

Date: 10/16/2015

HOLYOKE – With election day getting closer the Morse campaign has begun sending out “fact checking” press releases on statements made by mayoral challenger Fran O’Connell.

On Oct. 5, the Morse campaign charged that O’Connell’s claims the city failed to help him in purchasing an empty lot at the corner of Hampden and Pleasant streets as a location for his business’s headquarters in 2014 were inaccurate. O’Connell disputed the statement.

Kristin Beam, the communications director for Morse’s campaign wrote, “The city did a lot to help Fran O’Connell in his effort to purchase this property. O’Connell proceeded to submit a bid that was five times lower than the competing bid. When given the opportunity to resubmit a bid and negotiate, he chose instead to move his business out of the city. Later, this experience would become one of his most important talking points against the current administration.

“Holyoke’s voters deserve to know the facts. Fran O’Connell is entitled to criticize the Morse administration – indeed, he is entitled to run for mayor – but he isn’t entitled to rewrite history. Despite the city’s extraordinary willingness to help him – city staff even drove him around to other potential sites – Fran O’Connell made the decision to leave. The record is clear: It was Fran O’Connell, and not the administration, who dropped the ball.”

On the Morse for Mayor website, there is a screen shot of an email from O’Connell that expressed his thanks for the city’s efforts. “Both Danielle [his staffer] and I feel better knowing there are several options for office space in Holyoke. You have been very helpful.”

O’Connell submitted a bid that was 80 percent of a competing bid in May 2014. The bids were thrown out by the Holyoke Economic Development and Industrial Corporation, which issued a Request for Proposals.

In July, John Dyjach, the assistant director of the Economic Development Department wrote to Rory Casey, Mayor Alex Morse’s chief of staff and said, “I talked with Fran O’Connell about the RFP for Hampden/Pleasant. Tried to encourage him to re-submit an offer but it does not appear promising. He is receptive to continue working together to find other options.”

When asked to respond, O’Connell sent Reminder Publications the following statement: “Facts are facts and Mayor Morse seems to be ignoring many facts in an effort to spin the Pleasant Street Crossing story to make if seem like his administration is business friendly. Unfortunately, his story is just not true. What is true though is that if he spent half as much time actually working on economic development instead of trying to make it look like he's working on economic development, the city would be a whole lot better off.

“His lack of economic development and business experience shines brightly through in this, his most recent and blatant attempt, to look business friendly in spite of obvious evidence to the contrary.  His latest attempt to shift blame from himself to others for the lack of economic development in Holyoke requires cherry picking of facts and he ignores many.

“He ignores the fact that the Pleasant Street Crossing property remains vacant, that no jobs have been created and no taxes collected.

“He ignores that fact that the city repurchased the property from the original developer just last year for $40,000, not $300,000.

“He ignores the fact that the $225,000 high bid that his team selected was for a gas station, a locally undesirable land use for which the property is not zoned, and that will never be built.  Developers of gas stations, of course always pay a premium for property because no one wants them in their backyard.

“He ignores the fact that O’Connell Care at Home was willing to invest over a million dollars on the site building a mixed-use commercial office space, workforce training facility and a café.

“He ignores the fact that O’Connell Care at Home is opening a new downtown Holyoke office and that it is doing so without any assistance from the current administration.

“He ignores the fact that he and his economic development team issued a Request for Proposals for the property that did not include an ability to negotiate price with proponents – that's RFP writing 101.

“He ignores that fact that reissuing a revised RFP that included an ability to negotiate price caused a months long delay and he ignores the fact that his administration had already signaled it was willing to sell the property to a developer of a gas station and at a price at which a commercial office mixed use developer could not feasibly pay.

“And he clearly does not understand how economic development and business works, neither can afford the type of delays caused by his administrations incompetence.

“So the mayor can try to spin this anyway he wants, but the truth is the Pleasant Street Crossings property sits vacant, no jobs have been created and no taxes paid. Sounds a lot like the Lynch School property.”