Buyer Wanted: Former Fire House Back Up For Sale
Photos/Matthew L. Brown
REUSE SOUGHT: : (1)The City of Worcester is seeking bidders to redevelop the long-neglected Fire Alarm and Telegraph building on Park Avenue in Worcester. (2) The interior of the building shows years of wear and tear. (3) An exterior view of an original carving that reads “Fire Alarm Station.â€
Anyone who submits a bid for the purchase and redevelopment of the city-owned Fire Alarm & Telegraph building on Park Avenue is going to need, at the very least, a love for unique old buildings.
It’ll help a great deal if the bidder also has a lot of money and patience. And some creative ideas for a relatively small building with no real parking on a parcel that is undefined.
Up For Sale
The 6,735-square-foot brick building in Elm Park was the subject of a previous RFP that attracted relatively few responses from bidders whose financing options were not very attractive to the city, said Heather Gould, project manager in the city’s economic development department.
To be refurbished, the building will have to be gutted.
The interior is sorely in need of repair and portions are open to the elements. Walls, ceilings and windows are in poor condition.
But in addition to the financing of such a project and the challenge of the actual work involved, the Fire Alarm & Telegraph building is also what the city refers to as “Article 97” land.
The designation is a conservation restriction on what can be developed there designed to protect historic Elm Park.
Gould said the city wants proposals that give great attention to how the building “coexists with the park.”
But for serious work to be done, the new owner will have to get the property out of Article 97.
If the city were to redevelop the building for public use, Article 97 would not apply, but the city simply doesn’t have the money to tackle the project.
Bidders must also define the parcel that the building occupies as part of their proposals in order to determine what property will be taken out of the Article 97 designation.
And at least some of that parcel will have to be set aside for parking, because parking is prohibited on that stretch of Park Avenue.
History
The building was constructed in 1925 for the Worcester Fire Department. It once housed the central relay for the city’s fire alarm system.
Calls for service from any of the thousands of emergency call boxes on Worcester’s streets were received at the Fire Alarm & Telegraph building and relayed to city fire departments.
It is on the National Register of Historic Places.
In its day, it housed a garage, machine shop, coal room and boiler room (the boiler is still there) on the first floor and an operating room, battery room, office and sleeping quarters on the second.
Will Kelleher, vice president of Worcester commercial real estate firm Kelleher & Sadowsky Associates, said the Fire Alarm & Telegraph building presents some of the same problems to developers as the Mission Chapel on Summer Street, which he has listed for sale.
The Mission Chapel is older and larger than the Fire Alarm building, but both are antique brick buildings that have been neglected for decades.
The chapel, which is also on the National Register of Historic Places, has been updated and renovated in several key areas and yet has been on the market for eight months.
Proposals for the Fire Alarm & Telegraph building are due July 30.
The city has scheduled a walk-through for June 9 at 10 a.m.
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments