On Jan. 2, 2025, the Greenfield Planning Board approved a site plan review from Rural Development Inc (RDI) — a non-profit housing developer created by the Franklin County Regional Housing & Redevelopment Authority, which manages RDI’s rental projects.
The RDI proposal will demolish four retail storefronts in historic downtown Greenfield, located in one building at 176 Main St., to construct 24 apartments in a 4-story, fiber cement-sided building, with 1, 2 and 3-bedrooms, plus 8 townhouses behind a privacy fence facing railroad tracks.
RDI’s real estate manager said the project will “serve a mix of households” from a single-person household earning less than $22,000 a year to a four-person household earning up to $87,000 a year. According to RDI, their project was initiated by the city, which applied for a grant from the Massachusetts Housing Partnership’s Complete Neighborhoods program.
Greenfield property owners donated $50,000 to RDI for pre-development work, using funds from the city’s Community Preservation Act (CPA) property tax surcharge.
The entire project initially was owned by real estate developer Timothy Grader, who also owns Cohn & Company. Grader does business in Greenfield as Franklin & Main, LLC. RDI bought the parcels from Grader slated for the proposed apartment building and townhouses. Storefronts that house CopyCat Print Shop (24 years), Antiques Revival, Moldavite Dreams (moved), and Franklin Community Coop Administrative Offices, will be torn down. The first floor of the new taller building will include a lounge room for tenants, a mailroom, laundry room, space for building mechanicals, and a small property management office.
Planning Board member George Touloumtzis lamented “the loss of retail opportunities.” “I was struck by the lounge taking up a lot of space along Main Street,” Touloumtzis noted. “In your narrative you talk about people being downtown to access many amenities of downtown — some of the amenities are retail… and that’s eliminating an option. I wonder how essential the lounge was for the model residentially?”
RDI responded that the “original intent was for the current owner to actually own the commercial space, but that just didn’t work.” RDI said 32 residential units was the number that made the financing work. The project was described as a “mixed-income development needing both private and public funding.”
Touloumtzis mentioned that there was some City Council support for requiring “special rules for Main Street in particular to keep that a commercial corridor.” Board member Victor Moschella added: “If we had had input from the beginning, maybe we could have figured out why the commercial didn’t work, help them through that, get that commercial to work — because it was all financial — and we lost that commercial space. But there’s nothing we can do about it now because you’re not going to go back and redesign it.”
RDI received its first $50,000 in funds from Greenfield’s CPA in 2023. But the developer applied for a second funding request of $150,000 in FY 2026 from Greenfield property owners. The project says it will “enhance vibrancy downtown… by providing quality housing, steps from shops and restaurants. Local tax revenue will increase as the building owner will pay real estate taxes… based on two new buildings with more taxable area and a significantly higher valuation than the parcel currently provides.”
The second round of CPA local tax dollars “will continue to leverage other development sources, show continued support from the city, and help the project progress to the next phase.” RDI admits that “Greenfield has many empty storefronts and not enough people to buy the goods and services offered downtown.” But demolishing existing retailers reduces the shopping options downtown. RDI claims that “increasing density in the downtown area shifts some pressure away some from undeveloped natural spaces”— but RDI presented no evidence that their project will reduce sprawling development on the edge of town.
RDI also plans to submit a third “future request of $150,000” from CPA tax dollars. RDI acknowledges that Greenfield’s CPA has “valuable but limited resources,” and says, “if partially funded, we will continue to work towards full funding from other sources.” This project needs to raise a total of $24 million. RDI must gather some major commitment from “other sources” — both state and private capital.
Greenfield taxpayers recently leveraged a multi-million dollar public library and public fire station. But RDI is privately-owned. Taxpayers struggling to pay their own property taxes might prefer RDI seek “full funding from other sources” before repeatedly dipping into our limited tax surcharge pool, and to help displaced small retailers find other spaces downtown.
Al Norman’s Pushback column is published in the Recorder the first and third Wednesdays of each month.