Closed since 1991, the colorful marquee of the former movie house – first opened in 1938 – is a North Adams landmark. Even after being shuttered for decades, it remains a beloved piece of the city’s identity.
“I grew up, I went to the Mohawk. I remember sitting with my father watching ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Saturday Night Fever.’ And you know, I remember seeing those movies in there. Some will go back even further, and remember probably when the movies were 10 cents, and it was, you didn't have all the TV stations and everything else to occupy you," said Councilor Keith Bona. “It needs a lot. I mean, it's costly. I was on the first Friends of the Mohawk committee, I was on the North Adams Community Development Corporation. We owned it before the city. We were the first ones to own it. We put a new roof on it, we gutted it, we cleaned it out because it was moldy and disgusting, and we worked on getting the marquee ready for revitalization. And that marquee, which we spent almost, I think, $60,000 on the first time, already needs about $100,000 worth of work on it. So it's not a cheap building to have.”
After the most recent effort to sell the property for redevelopment, only one bid came back to city hall. Mayor Tom Bernard made a presentation to the city council about the situation at its last meeting November 9th.
“I can't tell you if I would support this bid or not if it was in front of us, because I don't see it, I haven't seen it," Bona told WAMC. "All the mayor put on the last agenda was, ‘I'm going to give you an update on the Mohawk Theater,’ period. It didn't mention who, what, where, when, any of that. And then during our meeting, we were just told it's going to be a multi-use or multifunctional building and the mayor expressed he had concern about the bidder’s finances, he wasn't quite favorable of the timeline. And I was expecting the next line to come out of the mayor's mouth to say, and that is why I'm passing on this bid.”
The opposite happened. Bernard said the city would accept the bid from New York City-based developer Veselko Buntic, who already owns properties in the North Adams downtown.
“Then when he said the bid was $21,000 – again, the price doesn't really matter to me – I think the price made some people's jaw drop because they're like, well, geez, the building was assessed at $450,000, and the guy’s buying it for $21,000,” said Bona.
Bernard’s decision didn’t just ruffle feathers on the council. His plan led to a heated call with former mayor and current State Representative John Barrett. Bernard responded by publicly calling for an ethics investigation, citing alleged threats to his family and livelihood. Barrett has not responded to requests for comment about the interaction.
For his part, Bona claims the city council has been left out of the process, and is making moves to change that.
In one of the agenda items he’s filed about the Mohawk for Tuesday, he wants to ask the city council to confer with the city solicitor on ways to stop the sale.
“We have always least far back as I can remember, when a bid comes in under the assessed value, it comes to the council," said the councilor. "I submitted a two page letter along with several pages of documents backing up quotes and statements and opinions from the solicitor in the past that support what I'm saying.”
Bernard says that isn’t the case.
“My staff and I did some investigation and we asked for a legal opinion from our legal counsel," said the mayor. "And the opinion is that the city council order gives broad authorization to the mayor to dispose of the property without further authorization, provided that the disposition complies with Massachusetts General Law chapter 30B, one provision of which is that it must be published in the central register. The bottom line is from the attorney, in their opinion, there is no requirement that further authorization by the city council is required. So this is a change in practice, and I understand that changes in practice create confusion, frustration. However, it is in compliance with the law.”
He says the assessed $437,000 value of the Mohawk was impossible to expect from bidders, and says North Adams should go with what they’ve got lest it have a chilling effect on developing a key vacancy in the downtown.
“It is highly unlikely that we would ever receive a bid at or above that value, because that would represent a sunk cost in the overall redevelopment of the property," said Bernard. "What I would say is, it is in the interest of the city to move forward with negotiating this purchase and sale because it is a viable proposal.”
The North Adams city council will take up Bona’s request to speak to the city solicitor about the planned sale of the historic Mohawk Theater Tuesday.
