Features

‘Fundamentally Sound’

Now-former Development Leader Says Springfield Is Positioned for Progress
Dave Panagore

Dave Panagore says Springfield has come to recognize that it is not Boston, and has only limited sway over the development community.

Dave Panagore likes to say that he’s been working in the “family business that he never intended to make into a family business.”

By that, he means the art and inexact science of planning and economic development. His father was urban renewal director for the Eastern Mass. city of Marlboro, and Panagore has followed in his footsteps, sort of, in various positions with Boston and Chelsea, Mass.; San Jose, Calif.; Springfield (which he served as chief development director); and, as of this writing, Hartford, which he now serves as director of Development.

While he was wrapping up his duties in Springfield, ‘signing off’ on a host of projects, and readying for the Hartford assignment late last month, Panagore spoke with BusinessWest about the City of Homes, what’s happened over the past 30 months that he’s been here, and what the prospects are for the future. And as he did so, he borrowed a line from his father.

“He always used to say that you can’t stop developers from developing where they want, and you can’t make them develop in places they don’t,” said Panagore, reciting the line as if he’s spoken it many times — and probably has. “The best you can hope to do is shape them and guide them.”

And this pretty much sums up what he and others have been trying to do for the past few years, while also instilling some confidence and a can-do attitude in this city and putting in place an infrastructure — meaning everything from a development team (now minus its leader, obviously) to a plan of action in the form of the Urban Land Institute (ULI) report — to move things forward.

In a word, if one term can cover it, the city now has an agenda, or much more of one than it had even a few years ago, Panagore continued, and it has considerably more stability.

“The reputation of the city — in the state and with the federal government — has been restored,” he explained. “The state views Springfield as a place that’s stable and fairly well-managed currently, has cash reserves, and has policies in place. And our relationship with the federal government, in terms of our ability to spend federal dollars, is restored.

“The city is stable … the spade work, the baseline work has been undertaken,” he continued. “The ground has been turned, and we’re ready to build on it.”

All this has positioned Springfield to more ably survive the current economic turbulence facing the region and the nation, he said, adding quickly that had this downturn hit three years ago it would have devastated the city. “With this economy, Springfield is going to take a hit, just like every other city,” he explained. “But it’s much more resilient now; it can take that hit.”

And these positive developments will help facilitate what are some very difficult development projects.

Indeed, as he has many times since arriving in Springfield, Panagore told BusinessWest that the specific development initiatives facing the city — from Chapman Valve to the South End revitalization; from the York Street Jail site to Court Square — are not easy. “If they were, they would have been done a long time ago.”

Looking forward, Panagore, who was recruited by Hartford and took that job in part because of uncertainty about his status here as the Finance Control Board winds up his work, says the current economic slump and general anxiety about the future will certainly impact Springfield’s short-term prospects for growth. But longer-term, he believes the city is, at the very least, better-positioned to achieve progress in the many ways it can be defined.

Mapping Out a Strategy

The wall outside Panogore’s now-former office in the municipal complex on Tapley Street is covered with some old panels that comprise an aerial photo of Springfield looking west. The composite includes most of the heart of the central business district and extends to the riverfront.

Thus, in the top left corner, one can see the preparation of the site of the new Basketball Hall of Fame, giving a strong hint that the photo is about a decade old. More evidence of the date is provided by the fact that the buildings razed to make room for the MassMutual Center are still intact.

The panels present few real signs of change or progress in Springfield, said Panagore, noting quickly that there have been many such signs outside the confines of this image — farther down the riverfront, at the industrial park at Smith & Wesson, in Indian Orchard, and in the city’s North End.

Meanwhile, some of the indications of progress, from a planning and management perspective, can’t clearly be seen by the naked eye or the camera’s lens.

Many of them are administrative and fiscal in nature, he said, adding that Springfield has managed to restore financial stability four years after the arrival of the control board, and, in the planning realm, has put together what he called a “functioning team.”

Elaborating, he said there is now much more coordination among the various departments within the planning and development sphere — including planning, code enforcement, community development, and economic development — and considerably more communication.

“When the control board arrived, there was little communication between departments,” he explained. “Now, there’s excellent communication, and a very cooperative spirit between those offices.”

The city also has at least a short-term road map for progress in the form of the ULI study, said Panagore, noting that officials are aggressively addressing that report’s stated priorities — Court Square, the South End neighborhood, the now-vacant federal building, and the downtown in general.

Overall, the city has a much more clearly defined agenda than it had even a few years ago, said Panagore, noting that it is one that is grounded in realism and some of those truths that his father professed.

“Springfield needed to recognize, and it has recognized, that it’s not Boston,” he explained. “Our ability to make demands on the market and tell the market what it will do are far more limited than they would be in a city like Boston. But we’ve been able, with each of the projects that have come along, to shape them by being aggressive.”

Running down the list of projects that are in various stages of progress, Panagore said most of them are on track, figuratively if not literally, starting with what he considers to be a new and improved plan for Union Station.

The long-dormant landmark is still slated for restoration, but with a slimmed-down plan — considered more realistic by those who have put it together — that calls for far less retail, an intermodal transportation center, and office space, some of which is already targeted for the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority, and Square One.

There is forward movement on other projects that are on the drawing board or soon to be there, he said, listing several, including:

  • The Chapman Valve location in Indian Orchard. The site of the former manufacturing complex where valves were built for the Navy and other customers is now predominantly clear, said Panagore, but the extent of sub-surface contamination is not known. An urban-renewal plan for the torpedo-shaped site is being readied, with acquisition by the city likely and necessary if plans to convert it into a business park — perhaps the most feasible use — are to become reality.
  • A shopping center planned for the old Westinghouse complex on Page Boulevard. Panagore said that, since the day he arrived in Springfield, developers have been trying to piece together a project that will give major retailers an attractive demographic between Enfield and Holyoke. The Packard Development Group has, in his words, “solved the puzzle” with a plan, now in the permitting stage, that will create a large-scale retail destination in that East Springfield neighborhood.
  • The federal building. It is now vacant, and while the city waits for the federal government to transfer ownership, various new uses are being considered.
  • The York Street Jail site. After years of trying to sell the landmark to the development community, the city has razed the building and will now to try to sell the land, said Panagore, adding that there is considerable momentum for a ‘court of dreams’ venture that will bring basketball tournaments — and, hopefully, large audiences — to the city.
  • 31 Elm Street (Court Square). The economic downturn will probably slow the progress of plans to convert the landmark into market-rate housing, said Panagore, but the question now is more when the site will developed than if it will be developed.
  • The South End. Recognized as a top priority by the ULI, revitalization of the challenged neigborhood is on track, said Panagore, with $6 million in improvements (parks, streets, sidewalks, etc.) budgeted, and the Hollywood section being the primary target.
  • Beyond specific projects, the city has been able to assert itself in recent years, said Panagore, meaning that it is not simply settling for what developers want to do, and where they want to do it, but setting high standards on design and construction.

    “We’ve been able to not only guide developers by being an attractive place in which to do business, with a short time period for permitting,” he said, “but also to help shape them and have them work in ways that will help the community fight for and achieve a level of design quality that other communities in the region have.”

    As an example, he cited a project to locate a new CVS on Sumner Avenue.

    “In response to our continual drumbeat of concerns about the façade they were planning, they’ve made changes, and they’re now putting glass in,” he told BusinessWest. “It’s a war of attrition to make continual, incremental improvement in process, results, and standards; Springfield deserves as good a building project as any other city in the region.”

    Puzzle Pieces

    That ‘functioning team’ Panagore says is now in place certainly has its work cut for it. As he said, the projects the city and the ULI report have identified as priorities are complicated, and the economy is one giant question mark that has most developers in a holding pattern.

    But, and this is a big ‘but,’ the city is better-positioned to handle these challenges than it was a few years ago — primarily because of a focus on what Panagore described as the fundamentals of economic development.

    These are some of the things his father learned and passed down — along with those principles of ‘shaping’ and ‘guiding’ — while working in the family business.

    George O’Brien can be reached at[email protected]