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Date: 4/5/2022
CHICOPEE – After the City Council approved additional funding toward the Uniroyal cleanup process during a March 3 Special Meeting, Planning Director Lee Pouliot shared that the city is undertaking the final stages of restoring the dormant 154 Grove St. space.
“We’re entering the final stages of clean-up work,” said Pouliot in an interview with Reminder Publishing. The additional funding allows Pouliot and his team to add critical detailing to the evolving structure, including flattening out some of the site’s demolished buildings for potential redevelopment spaces.
Constructed originally in the 1870s, the 154 Grove St. location is most synonymous with Uniroyal. The manufacturer operated in the area from 1891 to 1981, with the company utilizing the site to produce bicycles, automobile and truck tires before shuttering operations, according to the city’s website.
Revitalizing the former manufacturing space remained a central goal of Pouliot and Mayor John Vieau, who is overseeing the final stages of a 12-year process that involved three different mayoral administrations.
“It’s surreal to take a property worth negative of millions in value and clean it up…There’s a lot of potential [in the Uniroyal site], we want to unleash that potential,” said Vieau in an interview with Reminder Publishing.
During that time, Pouliot remained a part of the project, serving as a community development planner and administrator before becoming the planning director in 2014. He explained that the cleanup led to major transformation for the site, with several of the 33 buildings previously existing at the location being demolished in the process.
Among the saved spaces, the planning director highlighted four key structures that will eventually undergo the Request for Proposal (RFP) process.
“They are incredibly robust structures…they’re built like bunkers,” said Pouliot in highlighting two of the preserved former office spaces. The planning director also stressed that the city continues to be mindful about working resourcefully by repurposing materials from the original structure.
Pouliot’s work revitalizing Uniroyal mirrors a similar process with the Baskin Warehouse space, which is more popularly known as the “Facemate” parcel. The cleanup for that property also began in 2009, with both processes allowing the city to unlock spaces that were previously considered negative tax assets.
“This wouldn’t be done without the cleaning efforts…It doesn’t happen overnight, it takes a lot of hard work,” said Pouliot. While developers are currently reinventing the Baskin property into a space that includes a restaurant, sports complex, grocery store and market-rate apartments, Pouliot expects the Uniroyal RFP process to begin sometime this year.
“Within the next year, we’ll be looking for RFPs for Uniroyal,” said Pouliot.