Hopedale board rescinds support for Draper factory revitalization project
Photo | Matt Wright
The former Draper mill site takes up a large chunk of of Hopedale's downtown. Here it is pictured before any of the original structure was demolished.
An Urban Renewal Plan aimed to redevelop a vacant 1-million-square-foot factory in Hopedale is now in limbo after a partial court settlement in a lawsuit brought by the property’s owner.
The Hopedale Housing Authority on Aug. 8 voted to terminate its conditional approval of the plan, which called for a public-private partnership between the town, Grafton & Upton Railroad and Lobisser Building Corp. and dramatically change the landscape of downtown Hopedale and add new commercial and residential buildings at the former Draper Corp. textile manufacturing factory.
Hopedale Town Administrator Steven Sette, citing ongoing litigation, declined to comment on the status of the Urban Renewal Plan.
The vote comes shortly after the Hopedale Housing Authority and Lobisser agreed to settle their portion of the federal lawsuit with Philip Swachman of Worcester-based First American Realty, who has owned the vacant mill for about 30 years.
Swachman brought the lawsuit in 2018 as town officials were considering all options to acquire the property, including eminent domain.
As the Urban Renewal Plan began to emerge last fall, Swachman listed the building for sale, but nobody has pulled the trigger, according to his attorney David Lurie.
The threat of eminent domain may have inhibited potential sales, Lurie said.
“He doesn’t want to leave the property unimproved,” Lurie said. “He would like to move forward with something that makes sense for everybody.”
Still named in the lawsuit are a bevy of town officials, including all three selectmen and essentially any that had signed off on the Urban Renewal Plan.
A mediation hearing in the case is set for Aug. 21.
The Draper Corp. was once a textile loom manufacturing powerhouse. As such, the factory was the lifeblood of Hopedale. Multifamily housing in Hopedale and neighboring Milford were constructed for the sole purpose of housing factory workers.
The factory was acquired by Rockwell International in the 1960s, and the facility closed around 1980. Several public-private attempts have been made to revitalize the building, the most recent in the years just before the financial crisis began in 2008. Meetings fell apart as economic activity declined.
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Progress is inevitable. But these factories take me back to what seemed like a simpler time. A moment of nostalgia swept over me a few years ago. A friend and I purchased a factory in Springfield at an auction for only $1.
Years ago, I was with a childhood friend of mine, Charles M. Burns. He was fishing at the pond adjacent to this facility and caught a fish whom he later named Blinky.
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