In the package of proposals that the Valley Community Development Corporation recently submitted for Community Preservation Awards (CPA) one, in particular, caught my attention. This proposal intends to create eight “enhanced” SROs in a building in my neighborhood, 98 King Street.  Lu and I walk by 98 King almost every day, and have wondered for more than a year why the building, which had been undergoing renovations,  was now abandoned and left open to the elements. Porches have been stripped away, leaving improbable entrances 20 feet up. There are holes in the foundation and exterior walls, and the other day I noticed a cellar window was open. Only an unimpressive little padlock secures the front door of what has become a neighborhood eyesore.

Lily and Bennett Gaev bought the three-story building on lower King Street for $411,000 in April, 2007. Their plan was to convert the 1900-era building to commercial condominiums—a quick flip that would go sour. Husband and wife financed the sale with an adjustable-rate commercial $750,000 note from Florence Savings Bank.    Under the former owner, rents were relatively modest, about $900 for a big 2-bedroom apartment.  In March, 2007, all of the tenants were evicted, including Bob's Comics down in the cellar.  I talked to a former tenant who said that it was a traumatic time for everyone.  In August, 2007, the Gaevs’ contractor, Bourke Builders, pulled a building permit to demolish the porches and gut the building inside and out.

Time, I believe, stopped dead for this project on April 7, 2008.  On that day the Architectural Access Board in Boston held a hearing that would put the kibosh on the 98 King project after the building had been gutted.  The people in Boston told the Gaevs that they would have to have two means of egress for the third floor, and all public entrances would have to be accessible to people with disabilities.  The Gaevs were hoping to handle accessibility issues on the cheap by making the first floor handicap accessible and putting a consultation room on the first floor, along with a handicapped bathroom.   That was it for the project.  The numbers didn’t work, interest in commercial condos in the $600,000 range was not there, and, at this point,  I believe, the Gaevs had burned through the initial financing from the bank. 

Enter the Valley Community Development Corporation with its plan to turn the building into an SRO. In its thick, well-researched proposal, the CDC requests $225,000 in CPA funds that it would then match with Smith College and other state funds. If all the ducks quack, the city will have a $2.1 million eight-unit SRO on King Street, with a commercial space on the first floor. 

I guess it’s the downtown location that drew Valley CDC to this building, located near the corner of Trumbull and across from Sacred Heart Church. The possibility of getting a building that they never could have had a shot at a year ago must have been another attraction.  The building still belongs to the Gaevs, but the CDC hopes to close before the new year, buying the building for $300,000 and committing $5,000 to “button the place up.”  The building is attractive to the CDC because they can afford to let it sit around for a year or so while they get their financing in place. According to the proposal, they are borrowing the purchase money from an agency called CEDAC.

“That’s it,” said a friend of mine who wanted to know how Valley CDC got the down-payment money. “They are borrowing it. No sound business would use their own money for a  project like this.” 

The $5,000 the CDC is projecting will secure windows and doors, and not much more. Completion of this conversion to SROs is scheduled for a long way off—2011.   If 98 King is left as is for a year or two, the wind will blow through it, the rain will trickle in, and the rats will move in, if they are not there already.  If a homeless person ever gets in and starts a fire to stay warm, the resulting fire could be a ten-minute total holocaust type of blaze, threatening adjoining structures. So Valley CDC needs to think about the neighborhood and whether or not, they would want to have this empty building sitting in their built-up neighborhood.  The time for the fire inspector and the building inspector to visit is long overdue.

The preface to the CDC proposal, which talks about the shrinking numbers of SRO rooms and apartments in the Valley, is compelling. Meeting the need is important, but the community can get more bang for its buck by working with the owners of existing SROs who are putting them on the market, for one reason or another.  Eight efficiency apartments costing $2.1 million?  That’s about $232,000 for an efficiency. The city should concentrate its effort toward preserving places that are now renting rooms like Northampton Lodging on Pleasant Street, and a 12-room house at 209 Locust Street owned by Doug Ferrante that has served as a group home for ServiceNet for many years and is now losing its caseload.  About ten years ago, if my memory serves me right, HAP bought 96 Pleasant, got 28 units and paid only $350,000.   I know things are different today, but there will be better deals in the next couple years than this one.