Page 15 - BusinessWest March 17, 2025

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Holyoke
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all the boats to rise together so we’re establishing sustainability in our city?” he asked, adding that the answer to that question is the ongoing priority of his administration.
Not Your Run-of-the-mill Project
“Daunting.”
That’s the word Hagop Toghramad- jian, a project director and development counsel with Boston-based WinnDevel- opment, settled on as he was asked to describe the ongoing work at Apple- ton Street at the former Farr Alpaca complex.
Elaborating, he said he considers the project, called the Residences
on Appleton, now far more than a decade in the making, to be the most challenging building-conversion initiative that WinnDevelopment
has undertaken. And that’s saying something.
“We want to keep these small businesses local; we want to keep them here and give them an opportunity to grow their business.”
Indeed, the company has taken
on many complex projects locally, including 31 Elm St. (Court Square) in Springfield and several buildings in the Ludlow Mills complex, and in numerous other communities as well.
But this conversion of the 125-year-old former mill complex into housing is on another level, said Togh- ramadjian as he talked with Business- West in the kitchen of one of the near- ly finished units. He noted that there are several reasons why — from the extremely poor condition of the mill to the need to assemble property for parking and a three-story amenities building, to simply securing access
to a building bordered on one side by a canal and the other by the Pioneer Valley Railroad.
As with all projects of this nature, there was also the challenge of pull- ing together the requisite pots of money, which, in this case, included everything from state and federal his- toric tax credits to state and federal low-income housing funds.
“Where we’re standing now ... there was thin air, the floor had rotted through, the roof had rotted through — only the brick walls were still standing,” he said. “It was very dark, the air quality was bad ... you would never dream that this could become
comfortable, beautiful housing.”
But the various groups involved have
persevered because this project is as important as it is difficult, he noted.
“Given its location and given how blighted it was, it cast a shadow on the whole downtown — it was a top priority for the city,” said Toghramadjian, not- ing that the site sits between Main and High streets, the city’s two main com- mercial districts, and directly across from Holyoke Heritage State Park and the Massachusetts Green High Perfor-
Mayor Joshua Garcia, left, and Aaron Vega say Holyoke continues to pursue — and add — new businesses in the broad realm of climate tech.
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