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Date: 6/30/2021
LONGMEADOW – After years of discussion, funding questions, lawsuits and hazardous materials clean up, Select Board Chair Thomas Lachiusa cut the ribbon in front of the new Longmeadow Department of Public Works (DPW) facility at 170 Dwight Rd. on June 24.
“It’s been a very long, pothole-filled road to get here,” said Town Manager Lyn Simmons. She thanked current and former town employees and the townspeople for funding the project.
Employees of the DPW lined the sidewalk in front of the building. The town department heads also attended the ceremony, as did former Town Manager Stephen Crane, who oversaw much of the groundwork for the project.
“We had a challenge in front of us, there’s no doubt about it,” said MaryBeth Bergeron of the Permanent Town Building Committee. “We never lost sight of the value of this project to our town and our employees.”
State Rep. Brain Ashe said that a new DPW garage was on the radar when he was a member of the Longmeadow Select Board 20 years ago. He said that the new garage is “a building that says something about what our DPW means to our town.”
Bergeron echoed Ashe’s admiration for the DPW workers, saying “from the small tasks to the big jobs, they are there.”
The new building provides a clean, safe work environment, Bergeron said. It is a new, modern space. The front area of the building is composed of administrative offices. Past that are storage spaces, a large break room and restrooms with lockers and showers for employees after a day of often dirty work.
Attached to the rear of the building is a cavernous vehicle storage garage. With industrial-sized garage doors on both ends, the garage can house well over a dozen vehicles and the high ceilings comfortably fit the largest of municipal dump trucks and tree-clearing equipment.
The new building was needed as the old facility, constructed in 1931 on Pondside Road, was undersized and was in poor condition. The original site was not suitable to be rebuilt upon due, in part, to its location on a flood plain and the existence of methane wells underground.
Lachiusa said, “When we face adversity, we become better people, we become stronger people.” He praised the work done by the DPW team despite the less-than-ideal conditions. DPW Director Geoff McAlmond noted that time and money had been lost due to the department fighting against the poor conditions of the old building.
“It was work for them to go to work,” Ashe said. “Because it was down by the river, people didn’t realize how bad it was,” Ashe said. The out-of-sight, out-of-mind circumstances were part of the reason that the DPW facility was often not at the top of the list of capital projects. Ashe added that there were shifting priorities and political will over the years.
Even after the timing and political will were right, the project was far from certain. The Dwight Road property was acquired by the town through eminent domain in 2018. The three parcels taken by the town had been owned by Famiglia, LLC, a property development company, which was offered $2.6 million in compensation. The company then sued the town, claiming that the true value of the land entitled it to nearly double the money it was paid.
Leo Shapiro, the company’s manager, told Reminder Publishing, “Everything [former Town Manager Stephen Crane] told me wasn’t true.”
Later, the property was found to be contaminated with asbestos and, in response, the town countersued the former owners, arguing that the land was worth much less than the price paid for it. According to Vision Government Solutions, a property assessment and appraisal company, the land is currently valued at $1,758,700.
Peter E. Flynn of the Law Offices of Peter E. Flynn, P.C., the Saugus-based firm that is handling the case for Famiglia, said via email, “The Longmeadow taxpayers should know that the taking authority has the upper hand whenever property is taken by eminent domain. My client has assembled a strong team of experts on the issue of the property’s value when it was taken.”
The town has filed a second suit against the former owners under MGL 21e, which governs the remediation and cleanup of hazardous materials. The town is seeking $4.7 million in project cost overruns due to the asbestos cleanup. This second suit is still early in the litigation process.
Flynn said that the asbestos issues were “grossly exaggerated, if not entirely contrived,” and Shapiro “believes town officials are acting vengefully because of my client’s participation in earlier political and real estate matters over the course of many years.” Flynn also said that his client’s civil rights and due process may have been violated, but did not go into detail.
Since April 2019, when the asbestos matter was opened, the litigation around the property has cost the town $317,882, including $60,000 this year alone. Both cases are ongoing in Hampden Superior Court.