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Date: 10/25/2023
WEST SPRINGFIELD — It will cost $1.2 million, but Mayor William Reichelt says he’s found a new home for the town’s Department of Public Works.
The mayor is asking the Town Council to approve an eminent domain taking of 31 acres with 774 feet of road frontage on Brush Hill Avenue, across the street from the Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborative campus. Reichelt said this is one of the few available sites in town that has enough room and is relatively centrally located, close to both of the town’s main north-south thoroughfares, Piper Road and Riverdale Street.
“I think it’s the best site we could have in town,” Reichelt told Reminder Publishing. “We talked about other spaces that are smaller, [but] I don’t want it shoved into spaces that don’t work.”
The land is currently owned by the Springfield Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, and abuts the Dominican Monastery of the Mother of God, at 1430 Riverdale St. It extends along Interstate 91 to the west and south of the monastery building. Much of the land is forested and because of wetlands, only about half of it is buildable. Reichelt said he envisions building the new “town operations center” on what is now a cleared field directly adjacent to Brush Hill Avenue.
Councilors received the eminent domain request at their Oct. 16 meeting and placed it on the agenda for their next public meeting, Nov. 6.
The new site would represent a long-sought upgrade for the DPW, which currently houses most of its operations in a 4-acre parcel at 430 Westfield St., downtown, with the Water Division using a separate 1.45-acre yard at 135 Piper Rd. In addition to cramped conditions, Reichelt said the buildings on both sites are not adequate for modern needs.
“We can’t even buy properly sized trucks because we don’t have garages large enough to store them and operate on them,” he said.
Preliminary plans call for the operations center to include a hard-roofed salt shed, which would replace the current practice of storing winter road salt outside. Covering salt mounds with tarps doesn’t keep out all the moisture, Reichelt said.
Each year, “we probably waste $10,000 of salt down the sewer, or down the drains, because it just washes away,” Reichelt said.
Having a large property would also give the DPW “lay-down” space for temporary storage of felled trees and other debris after major storms. He said there’s no room for this at the current Westfield Street yard, so the DPW makes use of several sites around the town, including Mittineague Park and the Irish Cultural Center property.
Reichelt said he’s been looking for a new home for the DPW since he was first elected in 2015. The most recent public proposal was to use the Western Growers plant nursery parcel on Piper Cross Road, but he withdrew that plan because of neighbor objections. The owner of that property now plans to build a townhouse subdivision there.
The Piper Cross Road proposal called for the town’s Police Department to build a new headquarters at 430 Westfield St. after the DPW moves. Reichelt said it’s equally important to move the police out of their current station, on the first floor of Town Hall at 26 Central St., downtown.
“Both facilities desperately need to be replaced,” Reichelt said.
With “probably about 17 acres” buildable on Brush Hill Avenue, Reichelt said he’s looking at whether it makes sense to move the police there, too, which would allow the Westfield Street yard to be sold for development. He said if that happens, the police would probably keep a substation in the Town Hall building.
Reichelt said the cost of acquiring the Brush Hill Avenue land could come from federal grant funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, a coronavirus pandemic relief bill passed by Congress in 2021. The town has about $3 million available that it must spend by the end of 2024, he said.
Construction estimates from 2020 pegged the cost of the operations center at $30 million, and the cost of a new police headquarters at $40 million. Those costs would have to be borrowed and paid back by taxpayers over time, Reichelt said.
The mayor said he’s been negotiating with representatives of the Springfield Diocese to purchase the Brush Hill Avenue land since late 2020, following the withdrawal of the Piper Cross Road plan. The two sides haven’t been able to agree on a sale price.
A spokesperson for the Springfield Diocese did not return a phone call seeking comment.
Under the state’s eminent domain law, a government agency can take private property but must pay the owner a fair market value. Reichelt said the town has contracted with appraisers twice in the past two years to assess the value of this parcel, not based on its current status but on its worth to a potential purchaser that would put it to its “highest and best” use. In this case, the most valuable use of the land, under current zoning, would be as a housing subdivision.
The first time, in July 2022, the appraiser came back with a figure of $650,000, but both the town and the diocese agreed that number was too low. An appraisal dated January 2023 valued the land at $1.2 million. Reichelt told the council that the diocese had commissioned its own appraisal in September 2021 that named a value of $2.55 million, and refused to sell the land for anything less.
Reichelt said he’s willing to continue negotiations, but wants the council to start the eminent domain process in case that turns out to be the only option to complete “a necessary, needed project here in town.” In his memo to councilors, he said the town should offer to use the $1.2 million appraisal as the basis for this land taking, not the lower 2022 appraisal, “to reduce the risk of potential litigation and strengthen the town’s position in any future litigation.”
Reichelt noted in his memo that taking this parcel would not remove any land from the tax rolls, since it is already tax-exempt, being owned by a religious entity. He said if the current DPW yard on Westfield Street is developed as housing, there would be a net gain in taxable land.
The mayor said the Water Division would also move to the new operations center, but the town would likely retain the Piper Road yard, which abuts the Memorial Pool property, for use by the Park and Recreation Department.