Community Corner
City Acquires Department of Employment Security Building
Concord pays $1.575M; will open up parking spaces to the public, use grounds for Complete Streets construction staging.
The city of Concord has closed on the the former Department of Employment Security Building on South Main Street, according to Matt Walsh, the director of Redevelopment, Downtown Services, & Special Projects.
According to Walsh, the city paid $1.575 million for the 23,000 square foot building and three-quarters of an acre of land located between South Main Street and South State Street. The price, he noted, was $175,000 less than the appraised market value.
The city will have the building “weatherized and mothballed” during the next few weeks to save on costs. The windows will be boarded up from the inside, concealed with curtains, in order for it to not look like an uninhabited building, Walsh said.
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“The goal of the weatherization effort is to allow the City to decommission the building,” he said, “thereby resulting in significant cost savings on utilities, while ensuring the building can be returned to service if so desired as part of a future redevelopment project.”
Later this month, the city will allow parking on the 75 spaces behind the building from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays at 50 cents an hour, the same rate as the city’s parking garages. The spaces will be free on holidays, weekends, and during the evening.
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Next year, 20 of the 75 parking spaces will be utilized for a staging area for the Main Street Complete Streets Project, according to Walsh. The lawn area of the lot will also be used for construction functions.
Future plans for the parcel and building, which also is the location of a historic school building, is up in the air, according to Walsh. The city is “talking with developers that have recently expressed about the property” to see how their previous plans can be revamped. Past developers proposing projects include Steve Duprey and a development team, and ReARC, a group from Vermont.
“In the event those conversations do not bear fruit, we will then either market the property by issuing a new RFP or by listing it with a commercial real estate broker,” he said.
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