The New Year’s Eve fire that destroyed the former Railroad Salvage building has been deemed “suspicious” by fire investigators, but there is another word that should probably added to that classification.
Inevitable.
Really, who didn’t see this coming? It was only a matter of time before that thing either burned or fell down. The only surprising part, to me, is the length to which people seem willing to romanticize a gutted relic that had become perhaps the biggest eyesore in Turners Falls history, which truly is saying something.
Last weekend’s blaze, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars and untold man hours it took to douse it, also underscores exactly how vulnerable cities and towns are to absentee landlords who allow their properties to fall into disrepair. It’s a phenomenon I’ve encountered numerous times in my reporting career and it always seems to go the same way.
An owner either holds on to a vacant property for too long, or, even worse, buys one, strips out anything of value, and leaves it there to wither and decay to the point that it creates a safety problem for neighbors and the community at large.
Stuck in the middle are the town’s officials, who end up as frustrated as everyone else but with little power to change it.
That’s a lesson I learned in Greenfield many years ago while covering the saga of Ronald Goldstein and the dilapidated Showplace Theater.
I don’t know how much time and energy Greenfield officials spent chasing that guy to try to get him to not only pay his back taxes, but to either fix or demolish the building, which the town eventually did after acquiring it through the tax-title process. It was during that reportage that I learned how heavily the deck is stacked against towns when it comes to this particular problem.
“Let’s say you have a property owner who is a couple of years behind on his taxes,” former Greenfield Town Manager Norman Thidemann once told me. “And the town goes through the whole process of taking him to court to try and get it back. That guy could show up on the day of the court hearing, and writes a check for the back taxes and interest and he gets to keep the property. Meanwhile, we just spent all that time and money chasing him for nothing.”
That’s not to mention the political damage done to the officials in question. I’m quite certain the current Montague selectmen have driven by that crumbling hulk more than once and been just as disgusted as the rest of us. But there’s not a whole lot they can do as long as it remains in private hands. The only real option, outside of a tax-title process I’m told is underway, is to declare the building a public safety hazard, order it demolished, and then put a lien on the property owner for the cost of that work.
My guess is the Montague board will eventually have to go that route. Good luck, though, in collecting that money, because it is unlikely that an absentee landlord who didn’t care enough to maintain the property in the first place is going to worry too much about a lien, which is only collected if the property is sold. And my guess is, given its location and present condition, any demolition costs are likely to far outstrip whatever the current owners could get for it.
So it’s quite likely that any scenario will see the town owning that site. That outcome is going to leave many taxpayers unhappy, myself included. The last thing any town wants is to become an owner of potentially taxable property, although doing so opens up the possibility of future redevelopment. That is the hope on the other side of the canal with the former Strathmore Paper Co. building, another abandoned and vacant money pit the town has recently been forced to deal with.
Even though that building is so unsafe that it’s town’s own fire department won’t allow its people to go in there, it is at least still standing. For how much longer is anybody’s guess.
I know there are those who will be sad to see the Railroad Salvage building go. I’m not one of them. To me, that crumbling facade has become something of a monument to municipal impotence — especially as it relates a small town’s ability to protect its citizens from these types of bad building scenarios.
It can’t come down soon enough for me, and I only hope that in its place one day stands a structure that gives something back to a community which very much deserves it.
Chris Collins, who worked in local radio in a number of capacities, has observed political life in Franklin County for years. He also is a former staff reporter for The Recorder and a Greenfield native.