July 31, 2022
At last Tuesday’s meeting, the City Council emerged from a brief executive session to vote unanimously to authorize the City Manager to sell LeLacheur Park to the UMass Building Authority on behalf of UMass Lowell. According to the University’s “offer to purchase,” which is available on the city’s website, here are the terms of the deal:
The University will pay a purchase price of $1,000,000 to the city for the park. However, the net cost to the University might be reduced in several ways. The agreement states that if the city receives “a certain $750,000 federal grant earmarked for the property” the grant shall be transferred to the University. Since Congresswoman Lori Trahan seems fully involved in these negotiations, this grant will likely be received. That won’t reduce the money coming to the city but it will reduce the net amount being paid by the University. Also as part of the agreement, the city will transfer any “unencumbered property reserves or unencumbered maintenance funds” to the University. I have no idea whether these accounts hold a lot of money, a little money, or no money. Knowing the balance of those accounts will help put that $1mil purchase price in context.
The offer to purchase gives the University 60 days to conduct its “due diligence” assessment, and then the sale is to be consummated within 30 days of that. Unless any unexpected road blocks arise, the sale should occur around November 1st.
The University is also purchasing the property “as is” which is huge since there are substantial repairs needed to revive the facility. A further term of the agreement is that after the sale, the city will defer enforcement of any building code violations or like issues as long as the University commits to spending up to $3mil over 5 years on general improvements, maintenance and upkeep.
The city will also retain a right of first refusal on the property meaning that if the University chooses to sell the park within 10 years of this transfer, the city has the superior right to purchase the property at its fair market value. Also, the agreement also commits the University to “use its best efforts” to allow the city to use the park for the Lowell High graduation, the Fourth of July, and up to three other events during the year. There would be no rental fee associated with these uses beyond the cost of various out of pocket expenses to the University.
Finally, the University agreed to retain the name LeLacheur. The agreement suggests “UMass Lowell LeLacheur Park” or some variant as the ultimate name for the place. (The park is named for Edward LeLacheur, a longtime state representative who, in his valedictory act in the legislature, secured much of the funding needed to build the park).
By all appearances, this is a good deal for the city. With the Tsongas Center and the Inn & Conference Center, UMass Lowell has demonstrated its ability to revive distressed properties. Presumably the same thing will occur here, especially given UMass President Marty Meehan’s suggestion that by next summer there may be a professional baseball team playing at the park in addition to the University’s team. Since Marty is usually playing chess when everyone else thinks they’re playing checkers, who knows what else he has planned for the facility?
The demise of the Lowell Spinners several years ago made the city’s stewardship of the park unsustainable. The Spinners paid some amount of rent – I think it was $180,000 in the final year the team was there – but more importantly, the Spinners handled the maintenance and upkeep of the park. As anyone who has watched recent council meetings knows, the city is critically short of personnel in its public works department so expecting that department to add “maintaining a professional ballpark” to its To Do list was unrealistic. Similarly unrealistic were proposals for the city to recruit a professional team for the field. While such a team may be out there, the advanced repair and maintenance costs needed to get a pro team on the field would be borne by the city and with the Lowell High project and other capital projects a higher priority, there was not the political will nor the financial capacity for the city to make that happen.
Even if the net amount being exchanged turns out to be a wash, there will be some definite fiscal benefits from this deal for both the city and the University. By “a wash” I mean – and this is all speculation at this point - that even though the University will pay the city $1mil for the park, if the University gets the $750,000 federal grant that was going to the city for the park and if the University also gets a total of $250,000 in the “property reserve” and “maintenance funds” accounts coming from the city, the amount being exchanged is equal - $1mil for $1mil – but from the city’s fiscal perspective, the $1mil being given up was locked into LeLacheur Park whereas the $1mil received is new revenue that I assume will be treated as free cash which can then be spent on anything.
From the University’s perspective, the $1mil going to the city is likely coming from some real property bond so it won’t have any impact on UMass Lowell’s annual budget. But the $1mil being received from the city is all earmarked for the Park so the University doesn’t have to worry about getting that money appropriated by the legislature or cutting other programs at the University to come up with that first $1mil for maintenance and upgrades.
Zooming out from the details of this sales agreement, where does this transfer fit in the larger arc of Lowell’s history? Back in 2014, the UMass Lowell Honors Program hosted a TEDx event at UTEC. I was chosen to be one of the speakers (definitely a bucket list item). My topic was “Failure as Opportunity: The Founding of Lowell, Massachusetts” (which is available on YouTube).
My thesis was that from its very founding, Lowell has consistently tried things, had them fail, and then re-purposed the failed venture into something that worked. The prime example was the Pawtucket Canal which was constructed in 1796 as a transportation canal that eased the way around the nearly impassable Pawtucket Falls for rafts carrying goods from the interior of New Hampshire to Newburyport and the Atlantic coast. The canal worked as intended but within a few years, the competing Middlesex Canal opened. It provided a more lucrative water route from the Merrimack to Boston and it put the Pawtucket Canal out of business. The Pawtucket Canal sat unused until 1822 when a group of industrialists showed up looking for a site with sufficient water power on which to build a massive new textile manufacturing city. The already-dug Pawtucket Canal was an important bonus that helped seal the deal. The city of Lowell soon exploded on the scene as one of the most important places in 19th century America.
Fast forward to the early 1990s. Disruption in the high tech sector forced Wang Labs into bankruptcy. The triple tower Wang headquarters on Chelmsford Street faced foreclosure. Although the complex was valued by the city at $60 million, the winning bid at the foreclosure auction was just $525,000. However, within a year, aided by a critical guarantee from the city (which ended up not costing the city a dime), the new owners leased almost the entire complex to NYNEX and the buildings have been fully occupied and thriving ever since.
The collapse of Wang also caused the Wang training center on East Merrimack Street to become vacant. Several years later that building was acquired by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for use as the centerpiece of Middlesex Community College’s city campus which has aided Lowell immeasurably. The Hilton Hotel, just across the Pawtucket Canal from the Wang Training Center, was a collateral casualty of Wang’s collapse. It struggled until it was taken over by UMass Lowell as its Inn & Conference Center. Ten years ago the Tsongas Arena was another beneficiary of adaptive re-use when UMass Lowell took it over from the city. Now LeLacheur Park joins this roster. All the other instances cited here have greatly benefited the city of Lowell and I believe the same will be true of this transfer of the ballpark.
One last thing about LeLacheur Park: When Major League Baseball euthanized the Spinners, I wrote an Op-Ed for Banker & Tradesman, a real estate journal based in Boston. I’ve reposted my essay on richardhowe.com today so please check that out.
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While the LeLacheur Park sale was the big news from Tuesday’s council meeting, there were a few other items that I’ll mention before signing off:
The proposed zoning change that would allow an unlimited number of home businesses per dwelling was defeated once again. This came up two weeks ago and was defeated then, but only eight of the eleven councilors were present that night and through some procedural maneuvering, the matter was continued over until this week. The issue is whether to cap the number of businesses that can be operated in a household. Currently, that cap is one and the proposal removed all limits. Many of the councilors seem inclined to approach this change incrementally and impose some numerical limit on it. When the vote on the same proposal was taken this time, Councilors John Drinkwater, Wayne Jenness, Kim Scott, and Paul Yem voted for it but the other seven councilors voted against it. Councilor Scott then asked for a suspension of the rules and moved to refer the matter to the council’s Zoning Subcommittee to discuss a cap on the number of businesses so that a version more agreeable to the majority might be brought back to the council in the future.
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In another matter written about previously, the Joint Zoning and Housing Subcommittee met for the second time on Accessory Dwelling Units. I only caught the end of this meeting, however, the plan is to hold more subcommittee meetings to continue discussing this before sending it on to the full council.
I believe that somewhere on Beacon Hill there’s a provision in one of the bills racing the end-of-session deadline that removes Accessory Dwelling Units from local zoning ordinances. If that is enacted, it would presumably make ADUs easier to build.
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Finally, on Saturday, August 13, 2022, I’ll lead a Lowell Walk. The tour will begin at 10 am from the Lowell National Historical Park visitor center at 246 Market Street. The subject of the tour is the founding of Lowell. Although Lowell received its charter as a town in 1826, the first textile mill and power canal were constructed in 1822 which makes this their bicentennial. In my research preparing for the tour, I’ve focused on what was where 200 years ago. What we know as downtown Lowell was completely barren except for a half dozen houses. That area is so built up today that trying to envision it as an undeveloped space challenges the imagination. Hopefully my tour will help illustrate how it was.
For more information about this year’s Lowell Walks events, please check out the Lowell National Historical Park website.