Me and Bob!
… I snapped these photos of the Latin American Festival, City Hall.
– Rosalie Tirella
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Tag Archives: urban renwal
Urban renewal! Main South’s Junction Shops Mill Project!
By Ron O’Clair (photo by Ron O’Clair)
A couple of days before Christmas of 2011, Brady Sullivan Properties, a real estate development company out of Manchester, New Hampshire plunked down $1.1 Million dollars to purchase the long vacant and derelict factory complex that dominates the skyline on Beacon Street here in the City of Worcester.
The buildings had gone to seed, the roofs were leaking, the windows were broken, the pipes had frozen and burst, in short, the place was one step away from the wrecking ball when it was sold to a developer that wanted to reclaim this Worcester landmark and turn it into market rate apartments.
Other people over the years that it lay dormant had envisioned turning the place around, and giving it a renewed lease on usability to bring it into the future along with our fair city, which is the 2nd largest in the entire New England area.
Worcester was long noted as a manufacturing hub, and it was because of that capacity to produce goods that Worcester attracted the many different types of immigrants who came to our city looking for a better way of life than that they had known wherever it was they came from. People from all over the world have chosen to make Worcester, Massachusetts their home, primarily for the opportunities for advancement that this city offered for them.
That was especially true when I was growing up and Worcester still had many factories producing goods that were shipped out of Worcester to the various places around the globe where they were needed. You could find a job here in the city without even trying hard.
Brown Shoe on Hammond Street was a major source of Worcester pride in quality manufacturing, there was Chess King right on the same street, Hammond Street that made all sorts of apparel for sale in shops here in the city and elsewhere, there was Thom McCann out on Millbrook Street, another shoe manufacturer. There was Worcester Knitting Company on Brussels Street near where Rotman’s Furniture is today, they made knit goods like sweaters and polo shirts for sale all over the world. I worked there in the early 1980’s myself as an assistant building maintenance man, and night watchman.
The list of factories that used to dot the Worcester landscape is long and was impressive in the total output of goods that were manufactured here in Worcester for sale here at home and elsewhere. A legacy of this history of manufacturing is that there are lots of vacant factory buildings that are getting more run down as time goes on, and many have succumbed to the wrecking ball of time already, such as Standard Tool on Shrewsbury Street to name just one example of a major manufacturer that closed its doors and took its place in the history of Worcester books.
Thanks to Mr. Shane Brady, CEO of Brady & Sullivan Properties and his frequent visits to his daughter when she was enrolled in out prestigious Clark University in Main South, the Junction Mill Shops Project got underway, and is making good progress towards reuse of long abandoned and vacant manufacturing space. Turning an eyesore into something that Worcester will be proud to have fully functional and in use once again.
There are going to be over 100 apartments in the complex. That is 100 plus families that will come to Worcester to settle here in our great melting pot of a city, looking for a better life for them and their children. Worcester has one of the finest public education programs in the country as witnessed by the recent visit of our President Barack Obama to honor students from Worcester Technical High School. I have long said that Worcester has one of the finest public school systems to be found anywhere in the country, and that visit by the President bears out my assertion.
Now if we could only attract the manufacturers back to hire some of those people…..
The Junction Mill Shops Project is underway, there is a completion date sometime in the near future, I was unable to have the management contact me to get the specifics of the anticipated completion date, or the exact number of rental units there will be in the finished product, but anything that helps to transform that area from a vacant expanse of derelict buildings into modern homes for families has to be a positive for the City of Worcester.
The recent crackdown I initiated in the 700 Block of Main Street with increased enforcement against the drug dealers that frequent this neighborhood is also a step in the right direction and I thank the Worcester Police for taking my complaints seriously and acting to curb illegal activity that was a constant disturbance for my tenants here on Main Street during the nocturnal hours of each and every night.
Congratulations are in order for Mr. Shane Brady, the CEO of Brady & Sullivan Properties for saving those old mill buildings and making them thrive once again.
InCity Times book review: POLITICS AND PASTA … By Vincent “Buddy” Cianci Jr. with David Fisher
POLITICS AND PASTA: HOW I PROSECUTED MOBSTERS, REBUILT A DYING CITY, DINED WITH SINATRA, SPENT FIVE YEARS IN A FEDERALLY FUNDED GATED COMMUNITY, AND LIVED TO TELL THE TALE
By Vincent “Buddy” Cianci Jr. with David Fisher
Reviewed by Steven R. Maher
Former Providence Mayor Vincent “Buddy” Cianci Jr. continues to fascinate.
Cianci was the last of the old-school ethnic politicians. In this colorful, highly anecdotal memoir, Cianci recounts his rise and fall as the Mayor of Providence.
Industrial wasteland
When Cianci first became mayor in 1975, Providence was not a dying city. It was pretty much dead. An industrial wasteland whose industries had disappeared, it had little money, political corruption was pandemic, and the organized crime family led by Worcester native Raymond L.S. Patriarca dominated the city.
When Cianci left office in 2002 to go to prison, Providence was a thriving metropolis, with a booming economy, great restaurants, the attraction of events such as “Waterfire”, and was being described in national publications as one of the best urban areas to live in. How Cianci got the city there is a great story.
Cianci recounts his early childhood as the son of an immigrant doctor. He attended the “extremely prestigious” Moses Brown School, a place populated by upper class White Anglo Saxon Protestants. The social snubs he encountered as an Italo-American there scarred him for life: “[I] was the outsider who didn’t belong,” recalled Cianci. “At first I felt tolerated rather than accepted. It was a feeling I never forgot, and maybe more than anything else, it was that feeling that drove me to succeed.”
Cianci attended law school and became a “special assistant attorney general” under Attorney General Herbert DeSimone. In a high profile case he unsuccessfully prosecuted Mafia boss Patriarca. But it made Cianci’s name known. Because of his youth – he was thirty three when first elected Mayor – Cianci ran as a Republican where he did not have to pay any dues. Writes Cianci: “Because the Republican candidate had almost no chance of winning, pretty much anyone who could raise or put up enough money to pay for his campaign could have the nomination. So I knew I could get it.”
Unopposed in the primary, Cianci won the hard-fought general election by 709 votes. Like Barack Obama in 2009, he now had to face the reality of governing amidst the high hopes raised by his campaign rhetoric.
Limited powers
Cianci found the Providence mayor didn’t have a lot of power. It wasn’t as ceremonial a position as in Worcester; he couldn’t replace department heads without the approval of a Democratic controlled City Council. Cianci had four things going for him: control of the city inspection departments; control of what banks held the city’s money, particularly its large pension reserves; the ability to make political alliances’; and patronage. He exploited them brilliantly to get his way:
[Symbol] He made common cause with preservationists. Across America city governments were knocking down buildings as part of “urban redevelopment”. Cianci had the good sense to realize that Providence’s past could be part of its future. He repeatedly said no to tearing down historic if slightly decrepit buildings.
[Symbol] Cianci wanted to reopen the historic Biltmore Hotel and cut a deal with a development group to restore the hotel in exchange for tax increment financing. The owners of the building held out for too high a price. Cianci ordered in the city inspectors, who ordered expensive repairs. “I knew I wasn’t being fair, but so what?” says Cianci. “This wasn’t supposed to be fair fight. They were playing on my field and I owned the referees.” The owner reduced his asking price to $925,000, of which $300,00 went to pay back taxes.
[Symbol] The owner of Loews’s theatre wanted to tear down his building. Cianci refused to give him a demolition permit, and delicately negotiated Loews’s sale to a redevelopment group. When the owner held out for $40,000 he was allegedly offered in addition to the sale price, Cianci gave him a job for $25,000 as an “artistic consultant”. The building reopened as the Providence Performing Arts building.
[Symbol] In an innovative program, Cianci gave vacant lots to adjacent homeowners, putting them in the hands of peope who would care for them and at the same time restoring the properties to the tax rolls.
[Symbol] Cianci made a campaign promise to have Providence banks sell food stamps, instead of forcing citizens to go to distribution centers. Cianci called in Industrial National Bank President John J. Cummings and told him to either sell the food stamps, or he wanted millions of dollars in city pension funds in cash by 3:00 PM. Cummings agreed to sell the stamps. “[W]hen he [Cummings] died, the family called and specifically informed me I was not welcome at the funeral,” recalled Cianci.
[Symbol] When HUD offered a $9.1 million block grant to Providence, Cianci set up a committee composed of representatives of citizen’s groups to divvy up the money. Every time a group popped up, Cianci would co-opt it by putting a member of the group on the committee, which came to have 107 members.
Brushes with law
Cianci had two brushes with the law. In 1984 he was forced to resign after being convicted of allegedly assaulted his wife’s lover. Re-elected in 1990, Cianci in 2002 was convicted of violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) act by running City Hall as a crime organization. Cianci noted that he was indicted on 26 counts but convicted of only one, being responsible for the corruption of others.Cianci says that he will deny any involvement in corruption until his dying day. “The whole indictment was a fiction,” he said.
If you’re considering a political career in Worcester politics, Cianci’s autobiography is a must read. He has sound advice on running campaigns and a good common sense approach to urban renewal.