Old Worcester Courthouse Goes Up For Auction In January
Photo/Courtesy
IN SESSION: The interior of the former Worcester County Courthouse looks frozen in time.
An important piece of the city’s North Main Economic Development Strategy could take its first step toward reality in January when the former Worcester County Courthouse hits the auction block.
A request for qualifications of potential bidders was issued last month and responses are due Dec. 17.
The courthouse complex is considered state surplus property and is under the control of the state Division of Capital Asset Management (DCAM).
The auction is scheduled for Jan. 19. In addition to meeting DCAM’s qualification requirements, which include a willingness to spend at least $10 million on the project, bidders must also be ready to cut a check for 10 percent of the purchase price or $50,000, whichever is greater, on the spot.
A minimum bid of $100,000 has been stipulated. The property’s assessed value is about $4.1 million. The main courthouse building is about 110 years old. There’s also a second building constructed sometime in the 1950s.
The property and 10 others are part of the city’s North Main Economic Development Strategy Area as documented in late 2008 in a report drafted by the Worcester office of Vanasse Hangen Brustlin Inc. The report notes that “the cost of adaptive reuse will be high,” in the $225-per-square-foot range, or about $47 million. Federal and state historic tax credits could offset as much as 40 percent of the cost, however.
But the money is just the beginning of the challenges and obstacles facing any developer with the stomach to take on the 180,000-square-foot building.
Strategy Session
The North Main strategy report recommends that the old courthouse be developed as 211,000 square feet of office space, retail space and parking, and calls the property “a key element in the revitalization of Lincoln Square.”
Kevin Flanigan, a DCAM spokesman, said the value of the property to those who would consider bidding on it will drive DCAM’s ability to set it on its way to redevelopment.
“The biggest challenge to development is the economy itself,” said James Glickman, principal with Glickman Kovago & Co., a commercial real estate firm located across Harvard Street from the courthouse.
“It’s a terrific spot. It’s one of the best-located pieces around. I’d love to see someone do something with it, but somebody’s going to have to be pretty creative if they’re going to continue to use that building,” Glickman said.
The complex sits on not quite 4.5 acres on the corner of Main Street and Highland Street (Route 9). It was vacated in 2007 upon completion of the new Worcester County Courthouse on Main Street just to the south.
The Square
The North Main area is enjoying a bit of a construction boom.
The former Worcester Boys Club building at 16 Salisbury St. very nearby attracted two competing developers and is expected to be under construction by the city’s preferred developer, Acorn Management, as 28 units of market-rate housing by the end of the year.
Two former Worcester Vocational School buildings just across the street and next to Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Gateway Park are in demolition and are being redeveloped by owner New Garden Park Inc. and Winn Development.
Another Lincoln Square property that is part of the North Main strategy is the former Crowne Plaza hotel, which was bought for $16.8 million earlier this year by the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences to be used as student housing.
“That speaks to the location,” Glickman said. “But those are smaller projects” than the courthouse, and are geared almost exclusively toward the residential market.
Mark Shear, president of Berman Auctioneers & Appraisers of Worcester, will conduct the auction of the former courthouse.
Shear said the site could be attractive to developers, schools and others.
“There’s a real excitement and a real interest in building that area into something attractive,” Shear said. “Someone is going to have a real win-win situation here. This is not a property you see transferred every day.”
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