Southbridge Consultant and EDC Member Cite Greenfield and Northampton as Models - Both Have Mayors

Ken O’Brien

Today’s Southbridge Evening News features a front page article titled “‘Compelling story’ needed for downtown development”.

Ted Carman of Concord Square Development, recently hired with state grant funds to do strategic financial planning necessary to make the town’s long-term downtown redevelopment effort possible, told the new Economic Development Commission:

…he saw the same thing in Greenfield, where several landlords made no effort to maintain property and some sat vacant for many years. Over the last five [years] or so, though, the city has used a variety of funding sources and sometimes eminent domain to renovate and re-tenant five major buildings, with four more still somewhere in the “ridiculously complicated” funding process, he said. 

Industrial Development Finance Authority: The Next “Smart Cart”?

Ken O’Brien

Remember last year’s debate over the Smart Cart program?

First it was dead, then it was alive again, and finally there was reason to believe that it would be revivified at a later date.

It appears that a similar pattern may be shaping up in relation to the Industrial Development Finance Authority.

At February 6^th’s town council meeting the only item of business on the agenda was the third reading of the bylaw that, in its previous incarnation, would have created an Economic Development Commission and an Industrial Development Finance Authority. Last night, however, the vote was to create only the Economic Development Commission. The bylaw was amended to remove the IDFA.