Officials representing the prospective buyer of the eyesore Montgomery Mill complex on Main Street presented details of their $60 million project to the three selectmen Tuesday, delighting them with the news that a site plan would be filed by the end of the month.
“The status quo, the hulking emptiness of the building staying there, is no longer an option, so I’m very happy we’ve gotten to this point,” First Selectman Chris Kervick said.
“We’ve been working in the town for the last six-plus months,” said Dara Kovel, president of development at Boston-based Beacon Communities, “and I hope to be bringing you something that you can be very excited about with this incredible asset that you have on the river.”
Kovel, along with aquisitions director Thacher Tiffany, laid out the following plans for the site that Beacon has agreed to buy in March:
The newly-named Montgomery Mill’s main building will face the Connecticut River and have 161 apartments — 80 one-bedrooms and 81 two-bedrooms; 60 percent at market-rate rents and 40 percent affordable — on its five floors. New windows will be in place, and the exterior masonry will be repaired in order to maintain the building’s historic appearance.
The roadway along the canal starting at the Route 140 bridge and going behind the mill will become a pedestrian and bicycle path. Vehicles will enter the property and drive along the front of the mill on the river side.
The basement will have 32 parking spaces; around 140 spaces will be in front of the mill with another 95 off the north-end entrance and spacious lobby, which will feature displays of the mill’s history, Tiffany said.
Kovel also affirmed Beacon’s original schedule: acquiring the property by the end of the year, then conducting environmental remediation, and starting construction sometime in 2017. The apartments would be ready 18 months after construction begins, and Beacon will own and manage them with on-site staff, as it does with all its properties.
“We see ourselves as being a catalyst supporting your vision for Main Street,” Tiffany said.
That vision includes the state’s plans to relocate the train platform from its remote location south of downtown back to the center of town on Main Street, just north of its original site, which was the historic train station, across the canal from the mill.
Tiffany told the board the state is now considering Beacon’s suggestion of two government-funded foot bridges, one from the north end of the mill across the canal to the proposed new train station site. A second one adjacent to the Route 140 bridge would cross to Main Street.
“There’s no sidewalk there,” Tiffany said, “So we’d really like it there so people can walk into the town.”
The project also would benefit the downtown, Kovel said, because of its rent structure, which involves no government subsidies:
Rents for two-bedroom units of $1,700 a month for 60 percent of the units for earners averaging incomes of $68,000 a year; for 14 percent of the units, $1,083 per month for those in a group averaging $43,000 a year; for 16 percent of the units $903 a month for those averaging $36,000; and $361 per month for 10 percent of the units for those averaging $14,000.
“We believe that creating mixed-income communities is a really good thing for towns and cities and neighborhoods,” Kovel said, “because you get a diverse population.”
As a result, she said, “We’re creating a product that is going to really change the market and create a new [rental] market for Windsor Locks.”
As for financing, Beacon last month received a $4 million state grant to complete environmental remediation of the site. The award is conditioned on Beacon closing on the purchase contract, securing historic preservation tax credits, obtaining financing commitments from private lenders, and receiving state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection approval of a final remediation plan.
Beacon — known for its work in historic preservation and for developing sites with significant environmental and land use challenges — has a 40-year record proving it can do the job. It owns and manages around 12,000 apartments in 60 multi-family developments in New York, the Middle Atlantic states, and New England, including 1,500 apartments in sites in New Haven, Southington, Stamford, Waterbury, and Wolcott.
The grant is a significant factor in Beacon’s financing plans. They include receiving $15 million from the state and raising $12 million in private funding from donors and another $33 million from entities in exchange for the historic preservation and other tax credits.
When Montgomery Mill opens its doors, Kervick said, “There will be new residents in town, feet on the street to support the shops that are starting to open up on the street and that we hope will continue.”
In a related development, Kervick announced that the Ahlstrom Co., which owns the canal, the canal path, and the surrounding property, has tentatively agreed to allow the small picnic park planned for its land north of the mill to expand. The current 100 feet by 150 feet would expand to about four times that size and provide access to the Connecticut River.
“We’ve been trying to get that for a long time,” Kervick said.
