Page 35 - BusinessWest August 19, 2024

Fort Building’s New
Owners Plan Condo
Development
Peter Picknelly says he and other members of an investment group that recently acquired the property on Main Street in Springfield that is home to the Student Prince Café and the Fort did so to essentially control their
own destiny.
Indeed, this same group, which includes Picknelly, chairman of Peter Pan
Bus Lines and a principal with OPAL Real Estate Group; the Yee family; and Michael and Kevin Vann, acquired the restaurant in 2014 with the intention of preserving it for future generations of area residents. And as they embark on a series of renovations to the famous restaurant, they understood that their over- all path would be easier to negotiate if they owned the property.
But their motivations certainly don’t end there. The new owners have ambi- tious plans to renovate the long-vacant upper floors of the property into 50 or more condominiums, which Picknelly anticipates will fall into the ‘affordable’ category.
As he talked about these plans, he drew a number of similarities between the Fort building, as it’s known to many, and another project he recently led — conversion of 31 Elm St., the former Court Square Hotel, into mostly market- rate housing units.
Both buildings are historic, to one degree or another (31 Elm St. is on the National Register of Historic places, while the Fort building is not), both have been vacant or mostly vacant for decades, and both are “bears,” as Picknelly put it, when it comes to the many challenges associated with reimagining them as housing.
“But 31 Elm was more of a bear,” he said with a laugh, adding that, while
the upper floors of the Fort building do, indeed, present a number of construc- tion and financing challenges — he expects this project will cost $25 million to $30 million — he described it as certainly doable.
“This building is a lot like 31 Elm — it has great bones, but it’s been left to decay for decades,” he explained, noting that the ownership group will work with Winn Development, another partner on 31 Elm, on the Fort Building ini- tiative. “It certainly comes with a challenge, but we’ve teamed up with Winn, who I think are masters at renovating old structures like that and modernizing them and making them great places to live and work.”
Meanwhile, the runaway success of 31 Elm — the building was fully leased when it opened, and there is already a lengthy waiting list — provides both inspiration for the Fort building endeavor and proof of need for this kind of development.
“I think the success of 31 Elm has certainly demonstrated that people want to live in downtown Springfield,” said Picknelly, adding that, just as the Court Square project has injected vibrancy into downtown, the Fort building project can do the same, especially for that section of Main Street.
“I hoping that this serves as a catalyst for further development toward the North End,” he said. “I think that’s the natural course of progress for our city.”
The new ownership group, known as Fort Street Realty Assoc., acquired the property from the New England Farmworkers Council, which has been selling off its portfolio of real estate over the past year or so. The Farmworkers Council acquired the Fort building in 2011 with the intention of renovating the vacant upper floors, but those plans never materialized.
The property, which has been on the market for some time and listed for $2 million, sold for $700,000, an indication of the Farmworkers Council’s willingness to shed properties and get out from under heavy tax and property- maintenance burdens.
Picknelly said the new ownership group has several priorities for the prop- erty, including improvements to the restaurant (work in the kitchen, bath- rooms, and other areas), efforts to clean up and shore up the “streetscape,” as he called the storefronts along Main Street, and conversion of the upper floors into condos. BW
—George O’Brien
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