Key Worcester building remains flophouse
City officials, neighbors say new owner at 765 Main St. is an improvement, even if the tenants stay the same
In some cities, the thought of having a flophouse on Main Street or downtown is enough to elicit battle cries of "not in my back yard" and "not in my fair city" from businesses, politicians and residents alike.
But the hue and cry is decidedly absent in regards to one key building in Worcester.
Less than a month after Ediberto Santiago bought the Albion rooming house at 765 Main St. in late July, the city's license commission agreed unanimously to transfer the Main South flophouse's lodging license to Santiago, who has budgeted just $200,000 for renovations there.
The license transfer ensures that the Albion, a once grand, turn of the 20th Century building with a stone façade, will remain a rooming house for the foreseeable future. But the license commission doesn't think it missed an opportunity to see something else there.
And even though the Albion is right on Main Street, within easy walking distance of downtown and the proposed City Square development, the city thinks the rooming house fills a need in the community.
The long decline
The license commission's chairman, along with other community groups and Main South businesses, are pleased enough just to see Santiago there. They say even though the Albion will remain a rooming house, it will be a better rooming house with Santiago as the owner.
Santiago bought the Albion for $720,000, $23,000 less than its assessed value, from a real estate trust overseen by Annette S. Dutram of Northborough, who would not comment for this story other than to say she got as much as she could for the Albion.
The Dutram family owned the Albion for decades, and according to Billy Breault of the Main South Community Development Corp., the building, which could be a shining relic of Worcester's gilded age preeminence, has instead gone to squalor around the poor who live there.
At a crossroads
Improvements are being made to the porches that hang over an alley behind the building. Inside, workers are painting over the faux wood paneling with white paint and the common bathrooms on each floor are being renovated.
Santiago said the building's more than 100 new, custom-sized windows are due to arrive any time.
Tenants at the Albion pay between $360 and $400 each month, Santiago said.
He bought the building with a budget of $200,000 for immediate work. If that's the case, the windows just sucked up most of it. He said he could spend as much as $400,000 on the building over the next 3 to 5 years.
But Santiago's vision for the Albion beyond the rooming house isn't clear. He said he may expand the tiny rooms into efficiency apartments, but he also said the building would make a good hotel or bed and breakfast.
"This isn't a big thing. It isn't like an empire," Santiago said. "It's fun for me. It gives me a chance to fill a need in the community, and I can make a little money," he said.
Making money is Santiago's game, and he's built up the rare combination of street cred and establishment respect in the process. He opened Santiago Plaza, an extremely popular Hispanic market in Main South, a compact neighborhood between downtown Worcester and Clark University. He's also tackled other difficult development projects in the most blighted sections of Main South. At one time or another, he's been on the boards of directors of the YMCA, Worcester Community Housing Resources Inc., the Research Bureau and others. These days, he has an office for Santiago Financial Services at 700 Main St., within sight of the Albion.
Main South, its alleys, abandoned factories and vacant lots, is a magnet for the homeless, the hopeless, the self-destructive and the drug-addicted. In recent years, groups like the Main South CDC have been trying very hard to get the homeless off the streets of Main South, and developers have been eyeing the neighborhood's old factories and mill buildings as ideal locations for condos, lofts and apartments.
His good name
Even amid all that activity, Santiago's name and his modest ideas for the Albion are enough for the city and the people of Main South. Without places like the Albion, they say, the people who live there would be homeless.
Tim McGourthy, the city's director of economic development, said the city doesn't mind the Albion on Main. "The key is that we provide a range of housing for people of all incomes," he said. That responsibility would be made less weighty, of course, if the city could "see an expansion of all kinds of housing" in the Main South area. "I think this could be a good project, it could provide quality, low-cost housing, but it needs to complete the whole picture," he said.
Kevin O'Sullivan, chairman of the city's license commission, said the commission "saw a marked improvement to what was previously there" at Santiago's Albion. "And we found neighborhood support" for Santiago's plan to run the Albion as a rooming house.
"There's a housing shortage, especially for the type of housing this provides for," O'Sullivan said. "He's increased the number of rooms, he's making improvements. There's a lot of things going on down there that people don't like, so when people come to you and say they like this..."
And Santiago also has the support of another neighbor of the Albion - the YMCA.
Ron Dufault, the YMCA's vice president of financial development and communications, said, "Eddie was a board member of ours for some time. He is very interested in the community. Whatever he does, I'm sure it will be well done. It's an improvement to another property, and anything in that regard is fine with us."
Dufault said not much really goes on at the Albion during business hours. "So, I don't know that I'll notice much of a difference. I don't really know the pluses and minuses of a rooming house, but I haven't noticed any activity that makes me wary, and if that serves a purpose to people in the community, and Eddie sees a need..."
Breault said, "Some of the problem tenants are being dealt with." The tenants who stay, "will have a better, cleaner, safer building to live in."
"You hear about this area being drugs and crime and prostitution, but we really don't see it," said Dufault. "I think that becomes a little mythologized. Whatever (Santiago) does over there is going to be in the best interest of the community," he said. "He knows Main South very well, and is respected as well. Is that the best use of that property? Who knows?"
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