Page 70 - BusinessWest October 27, 2021

Trolley
Continued from page 68
and easy access to highways is a major consider- ation. But there were others, including large open space for a warehouse, parking, and more, as
the company, working with a broker, considered a number of options, including property at the Deer Park Industrial Park in East Longmeadow.
“There are a lot of reasons why we’re here — location, price, everything. But I love old buildings, and this is one of the most historic buildings around.”
Eventually, the search ended at a rather intriguing place, the corner of Main and Carew streets in Spring- field, home for nearly 125 years to a building known as the ‘Trolley Barn.’
“That’s a nod to the days when there were actual stables for horses that would pull carriages,” said Trask, adding that the property cer- tainly has seen a
great deal of history and change; from the horse- drawn cars to the electrically powered trolleys
of the Springfield Street Railway Co., to far more recent uses. These include it being home to Peter Pan Bus Lines’ Coach Builders repair and restora- tion facility, and, simultaneously, a methadone clinic in the front-office section of the facility.
Trask and Sean Gouvin, the company’s vice president, recalled that, when they were first
introduced to the property by Brendan Greeley, a broker at R.J. Greeley Co., they saw both opportu- nity and challenge, in perhaps equal amounts.
The former was represented by those afore- mentioned boxes being checked, especially the location part; the property is just a few hundred feet from an on-ramp to I-91, a few blocks from I-291, and a just a few minutes from the Mass Pike. The latter came in the large amount of work
Before-and-after shots of the office area show the amount of work needed to restore the historic Trolley Barn to its former luster.
Trolley
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