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Date: 10/12/2022
MONSON – Overgrown vines, shattered windows and wooden boards make up the exterior of the vacant Omega Mill on Bliss Street. With hopes of bringing life back to the old mill, a request for qualifications (RFQ) has been issued by the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission (PVPC), the towns consultant on the project, for a mill reuse feasibility study.
Toni Uliana, conservation agent, explained that the Omega Mill has been abandoned since about 1989. “It was originally built in 1850 and used for wool storage. Across the street was the main factory, it was Ellis Mill number one when it was first built in the early 1800’s. That was also abandoned, and it was torn down in 1991, so you can still see the remains of the dam when you look across the street that used to flow under the building.”
She continued, “The one that is currently still standing, after it was sold, it was used for wool and textile storage. It was sold to Zeros and then to Omega Metal Processing where they did electroplate [and] metal finishing.” Uliana said this is “not the most environmentally sound process” because of all the different chemicals they must use.
“The Chicopee Brook runs underneath part of that building as well and there was a spill – over 2,000 gallons of cadmium cyanide in 1989 – so there was an EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) response team to come in and remove what was hazardous material left on the site and to do some assessments,” shared Uliana.
Since then, the Omega Mill has been left in its current decrepit state. Where the mill is located, Uliana said, is a “beautiful section” of Chicopee Brook and a “very underutilized area of town.”
She went on to explain that the U.S. EPA classifies sites in two categories: superfund sites, which are messy and hazardous, and then brownfield sites, which are the lower level. When a spill like this one occurs, Uliana said, they will come in to clean up some hazardous material and try to remove contaminated soil that will usually be assessed. “They take the immediate threat away and it kind of just sits there until people come up with the money to continue doing a site assessment to see if there’s anything left behind,” she added.
In the early 2000s, the Omega site was assessed under grants, by the EPA, and was cleared in 2005.
Fast forward several years, Uliana said it has been hard to track down the owners of the mill. She noted that cleaning up a site for reuse also comes with a significant price tag.
Town Administrator Jennifer Wolowicz explained that when buildings or homes become abandoned, they sometimes end up in tax tile, meaning the taxes haven’t been paid by the owner so the town ends up owning the building. Sometimes, the town will auction the building off. To do so, they must go through a legal process to meet the requirement where the town can officially own it before auctioning it off. Any outstanding taxes or water and sewer bills, anything owed to the community from that must get paid out first from the funds. Wolowicz said sometimes those vacant buildings and houses are left in disrepair and items still inside, which forces them to hire someone to come in and clean it out, costing more money to the town.
“You’re sometimes not making any money from the actual auction sale, but the goal of the community is to get the property back on the tax rolls,” said Wolowicz. “Once you can get the property up to something that you could re-sell or reuse for something, if someone buys it then they’re going to pay the taxes back to you that going forward you wouldn’t have had.”
In this case, with an old mill, Wolowicz noted that a lot of the cost is the brownfield side of it. “We, the town, don’t want to take the ownership of it officially until we know it’s cleaned up, because if you take the ownership then you’re responsible for the cleanup.”
Wolowicz explained that the goal the town is working toward with Uliana is to find as many grants as possible available through a variety of agencies and avenues. “It’s a big project that will be a multi, multi-year project. This isn’t something that happens overnight,” she added.
On Sept. 30, the PVPC issued the RFQ. Their deadline to receive responses from companies who are going to come in and conduct a feasibility study for the town is Oct. 25. All responses will go directly to the PVPC. At press time, Wolowicz said they had not received any responses yet.
In the applications, the firms must submit information that shows they have experience doing similar work, at least five years’ experience doing site assessments, experience with economic development, list of references, among other requirements.
The RFQ states that all planning services must be completed by May 31, 2023. “Whoever wins the award for the feasibility study, they’ll have to finish their work by then,” said Wolowicz.
Once the responses are in, Uliana will work with the senior planner to start a committee to find out who should be involved in the review of the responses they receive. Wolowicz said the committee is typically made up of town employees. It’s usually not Select Board members at this level, as they will be involved in the next level. “We do the groundwork and then we bring it to [the] Select Board for contract approvals, awards and things like that,” she shared.
Some potential members who could be on this committee include Uliana, the building commissioner, Water/Sewer Department, Highway Department, Council on Aging, Parks and Recreation, Housing Authority, among others.
“We try to bring in people that would have the opportunity to give us information for what we want it [to be] for the future, because feasibility means what are we going to use it for,” explained Wolowicz.
Through an Open Space and Recreation Plan that was completed earlier this year, Uliana said over 90 percent of residents who responded were interested in having a river walk or bicycle path to enjoy Chicopee Brook. Currently, the Omega Mill area is zoned industrial, however, due to its proximity to the downtown area, Uliana said it would be nice to eventually find out that they can reuse it for something, perhaps even housing, as it’s what the town needs.
Wolowicz said the committee will take about three to four weeks to go through the responses. The town then has 45 days to respond to the people who submitted their responses.
She noted that the budget for this is $50,000 and the company selected for the feasibility study cannot spend more than that. Once all the responses are received, Wolowicz said they will negotiate the fee with them.
After the feasibility study is complete, Wolowicz said the town will then take the study and decide through herself, Uliana, the Select Board and probably town meeting, if they want to move forward with the study that came out of the RFQ.
To avoid having this study “sit in people’s drawers,” Wolowicz expressed the importance of having stewards in the community such as employees, committee members and residents who “really want to champion these types of efforts.”
She continued, “Sometimes it’s private business owners in town that are looking to contribute back to the community and really want to be a champion of a certain project.”
Adding on to Uliana’s previous point about the Open Space and Recreation Plan, Wolowicz said through this, people were able to share what is important to them and what they would like to see in town. While this has been an ongoing conversation for many years, she shared, “This will just be a culmination of all those conversations and our goal with the feasibility study is that we will actually put the feasibility study into action.”