June 11, 2007
A Berlin Wall in Worcester
By Cory Hopkins
City officials struggle to redevelop the old
Standard Foundry building, neighboring parcels
The old Standard Foundry building in Worcester
The foundry building at 25 Southgate Street, and several surrounding parcels, has been on the minds of city planners since 1994.
Today's planners want the 11-acre brownfields site surrounding the dilapidated foundry transformed into the South Worcester Industrial Park (SWIP), home to a collection of light manufacturing operations and a much-needed economic boost for the run-down neighborhood surrounding it.
The vision is clear. The means of achieving it aren't.
As it stands now, four parcels, or roughly 7.6 acres, of the site are city-owned. The largest is at 25 Southgate Street.
Plans call for asbestos remediation and demolition of the building and an extension of Gardner Street through to Armory Street in the rear of the building, to essentially cut the parcel in two.
What is uncertain, however, is the exact cost of asbestos remediation and demolition of the building, said Heather Kamyck, project manager and brownfields coordinator for the city's economic development division.
Estimates from 2004 put the cost of asbestos remediation on the site at $1.2 million. As a result, the city applied for a $350,000 grant from Mass Development's brownfields fund to help offset the cost.
The application was recently denied, with MassDevelopment funds instead allocated to a residential brownfields redevelopment project around the corner at 93 Grand St.
More recent estimates however, peg the price of asbestos cleanup at 25 Southgate at only $720,000. The price went down as new, more efficient techniques for removal were discovered, Kamyck said.
What lurks beneath
The extra $500,000 in savings may still not be enough to go ahead with site cleanup and eventual demolition, Kamyck said. There are still other factors to consider, including what's in the soil."When you're looking at sub-surface environmental, you always find something you don't know about. So these are broad estimates of what it will cost, so it could go up or down," Kamyck said.
A lot of progress has been made in improving the overall site, according to Tim McGourthy, economic development director for the City of Worcester.
But the third phase of the plan, clean-up and demolition of selected buildings, is stalled with the uncertainty of the 25 Southgate parcel.
Tim McGourthy, economic development director for the city of Worcester.
Armory Street runs parallel to Southgate Street. Last year, the city was granted $200,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency for asbestos cleanup at 65 Armory St., just behind the Southgate parcel. Last month, the city was granted another $200,000 from the EPA in assessment funds that can be used at any SWIP site.
Kamyck said the end goal of removing asbestos from both 25 Southgate and 65 Armory is scheduled to begin in mid-July.
The catch
While that happens, Kamyck said, the city plans on bringing in a demolition engineer to estimate the total cost of demolishing the old foundry building once and for all.
But there's a catch. Of course.
Adjacent to the 25 Southgate parcel lies another old foundry building at 17 Southgate Place that dates to the Civil War, when the city did its part for the war effort and manufactured cannonballs on the site.
In addition to its patriotic lineage, the building also features a unique chipped stone and stucco design, not common around here.
As such, it has attracted the attention of historical preservationists.
So, after getting reliable estimates of the cost of asbestos removal on the main sites of the park, removing the asbestos from the site, demolishing several buildings, and finishing the roadwork around and through the park, the next challenge lies in finding a way to incorporate the historic building into a new, modern, industrially usable site.
"SWIP is absolutely a multi-year project," McGourthy said. "It has been since its beginning in terms of the conceptual idea. As we've put various pieces together we've made significant gains. But it has always been a multiple year project."
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