Crews at Work at Former State Hospital, Turning Buildings Into Rental Housing

NORTHAMPTON - A new stage of development is under way at the planned Village at Hospital Hill off Route 66 in Northampton.

For the past several weeks, construction crews have been working on the north campus of the former state mental hospital, which closed in 1993.

For more than a decade, city officials have pressed to find new uses for the state land - and to link development to the city's economic well-being.

Now, the sounds of construction can be heard on the former main campus.

Gagliarducci Construction Inc. of Springfield is carving out 1,000 feet of what is now Village Hill Road and installing utilities, such as gas, electric, and drains.

At the same time, Aquadro & Cerruti Inc. of Northampton is renovating two brick-and-mortar buildings that will be turned into 33 units of mixed-income rental housing.

One of the buildings formerly served as a dormitory for nurses and will comprise 22 apartments. The other building housed state hospital employees and will include 11 apartments.

The 33 rental units should be ready for occupancy by next spring, said Thomas Kegelman, project manager at The Community Builders, a Boston group handling residential development on the former state hospital grounds.

The planned Village at Hospital Hill, a sprawling 120-acre plus landscape, calls for 207 housing units and 476,000 square feet of commercial and industrial space.

All 207 housing units are slated for the Village at Hospital Hill, including a subdivision still under way on Ice Pond Drive.

The 33 rental units will have one, two, or three bedrooms. Some of the units will be handicapped-accessible and 75 percent of the units will have affordability restrictions, based on the area's median income.

Another half dozen or so apartments will rent at market rate, said Kegelman.

The Community Builders plans to advertise the units for occupancy in the fall.

The renovation project on the north campus is expected to cost about $5 million and is being paid for through a combination of local, state, federal and private dollars, Kegelman said.

Construction of Village Hill Road is being funded by a $1.8 million state Public Works Economic Development Grant.

The same grant also will cover the cost to reconstruct Earle Street from Route 66 to Route 10, said Elizabeth Murphy, project manager at MassDevelopment, which is overseeing road and infrastructure work.

City officials say they are awaiting word from the state on a $2 million Community Development Action Grant that would fund construction of South Campus Road.

"That's the next big project," said Murphy, of MassDevelopment, which plans to match the Community Development Action Grant with an additional $2 million.

Asked whether Northampton stands a chance of winning the competitive grant, Teri Anderson, the city's economic development coordinator, said: "I think they understand this is a very important economic development project for the city and the region."

The south campus, located on the south side of Route 66, is to be developed solely as commercial and industrial space. To date, no lots or buildings have been sold on the south campus, Anderson said.

The project also includes 60 to 80 assisted-living units that, because they are part of a human-services business, are counted as part of the property's future commercial uses, Anderson said.

This article was written by Dan Crowley and published by Daily Hampshire Gazette on Thursday, July 7th 2005 and NOT owned by nor affiliated with opacity.us, but are recorded here solely for educational use. The photographs featured in the article are randomly selected from the Northampton State Hospital galleries on opacity.us unless noted otherwise; they may not directly relate to the article subject matter except for the site location - any other relation is purely coincidental.