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Date: 9/12/2022
HOLYOKE – The City Council voted unanimously during their Sept. 1 special meeting to approve a zone change for the historic First Congregational Church building that will allow a repurposing of the building into a museum and motorcycle dealership.
The request was filed by Indian Motorcycle of Springfield owner Dennis Bolduc who has proposed a project to the city where the building will be turned into a museum and motorcycle dealership. The City Council approved the zoning change after receiving recommendation from the Ordinance Committee. Bolduc needed the city to rezone the parcel from Residential-2 (R2) to Business Highway (BH).
“We had our public hearings relative to this zone change which is an area that has a lot of business in it, and it’s an area that’s had a lot of exciting new business development,” said Councilor and Ordinance Committee Chair Linda Vacon.
The former church on Hampden and Pleasant streets – built in 1894 – has been on the market pending rezoning for $595,000. It has not been used as a church since 1996 when the First and Second congregational churches merged to form the United Congregational Church. According to the listings, the property includes a 17,596-square-foot church building and an additional 9,784 square feet of basement space.
Bolduc told Reminder Publishing last month that he chose the church location for this project due to its look and historic implications to the city.
“It’s a great building, a historic building. It’s a unique structure. We don’t have any of those left around. To knock that building down would be a shame,” Bolduc said. “You leave a building like that abandoned, it’s not going to be a good situation.”
Ward 4 Councilor Kocayne Givner said,“The Indian Motorcycle corporate people are excited about the vision, and they love the location, so I think that’s very positive for the community as a whole.”
Ward 3 Councilor David Bartley said not only would the building be turned into a museum as proposed, but that Bolduc was interested in reopening Mel’s, a former beloved Italian restaurant in the city. He called the former restaurant’s closing a “huge void for the city.”
Almost all councilors were in favor of the project and felt it would be a great addition to the city.
“I think this is a great piece of development of the city. I think it cannot be overstated the importance of preserving this church building,” Jourdain said.
While the council casted a unanimous approval of the zone change, At-Large Councilor Tessa Murphy-Romboletti said while she felt it was a great project and reuse of the historic building that the zone change could still lead the city down a slippery slope.
“If you look at the zoning map, it’s going to be the only business BH zoning to the west of Pleasant Street, so I guess I just am concerned that that could open the door for other things,” Murphy-Romboletti said.
This sentiment was similar to that of the Planning Board, who through a joint meeting with the Ordinance Committee, took the full 21-day waiting period following a public hearing for the zone change in July to receive legal opinion on spot zoning from the city. This caused a delay in any approval of the plans and Bolduc told Reminder Publishing last month that he felt he was being left in the dark and is not sure where things stood going forward awaiting this period for the Planning Board to gather a legal opinion.
Bolduc, who owns Indian Motorcycle of Springfield on Southampton Road in Westfield, told Reminder Publishing last month that he felt the project was up in the air and that the Planning Board, “is pretty much against it and they consider it not possible.”
While the Planning Board ultimately had nothing to add from that point and the Ordinance Committee recommended the proposal to City Council as soon as they could, Chair Mimi Panitch said the board was doing their due diligence in taking the time to identify potential issues that could arise from the zone change.
According to Panitch, an example of when spot zoning arises is when an owner of a residential use building decides that their highly traveled corner or property would be a great spot for a fast-food drive-thru. If the local government grants a zone change to allow the new business, the property basically becomes more valuable, but nobody gets any benefit from the change outside of the minor extent that the city may be able to collect higher taxes on it.
“It violates the basic zoning principle that says zones should be uniform, without little incongruous patches popped down in the middle of them. The properties around it don’t get a similar ability to use their properties for business,” Panitch told Reminder Publishing.
Panitch added that since the business use in this example will alter the character of the neighborhood, it will likely have a negative impact on the value of properties as desirable residential parcels. She added it can be looked at as an uncompensated transfer of value from them to the person receiving the zone change.
According to Panitch, the Planning Board had broad sets of concerns before the zone change could be recommended to City Council. They were looking for a legal opinion on whether the zone change to BH would constitute a spot zone, which would be illegal, and they are sorry that the public hearing was closed on the application before receiving the opinion from legal counsel.
The first issue was with the application asking for a zone change to BH in order to allow Bolduc to use the property for his planned motorcycle dealership, museum and potential restaurant. Panitch said except under rare circumstances, the city can’t actually change a zone for a specific project and have a way of ensuring it will actually get that project.
“Once you change a zone, the owner can put any use there that is allowed in the relevant zoning district,” Panitch said. “You will hear the following warning over and over [from the Planning Board]: We zone for the use, not for the project. When we’re examining a zone change, we need to look at the entire range of uses that could be established on a property under the new zoning designation. Properly speaking, then, the question isn’t whether we think the project set forth in that City Council order would be a good thing on that property. It’s whether we think BH uses generally are the right fit for the location.”
Panitch added that basically, the Planning Board was not convinced that this change was the right fit, even if they do think the particular project would be a good fit for the city. She added the board has broadly agreed that a commercial zone is appropriate for the location but the neighborhood surrounding it is a mix of small-scale businesses and residences and trying to turn it into more of a highway-type location risks real harm to the character of the surrounding areas.
“If it were possible to grant the zone change to BH contingent upon Mr. Bolduc preserving the church, and putting a motorcycle dealership, restaurant and museum on the property, this would be easy,” Panitch said.
According to Panitch, nobody from the board has seen a conceptual plan from Bolduc showing how he might do it, which would allow city officials to at least take a guess about how realistic the project might be. Now that the zone change has been granted, there’s no taking it back if something the city doesn’t like is put there.
“In this case the Planning Board is/was more risk-averse than the City Council, and perhaps more vividly aware of the degree to which people’s plans for properties don’t always come to fruition,” Panitch added. “Now that the zone change has passed the Council, I very much hope that all our concerns turn out to have been misplaced. The dealership in the beautiful, preserved church, and some day perhaps a restaurant to go with it, could be a fabulous addition to the area, and I’ll be very happy to be able to change that ‘could’ to ‘will’ some day not too far from now.”