A former manufacturing hub in Springfield, Massachusetts is now home to a few hundred residents — after years of work that city and state leaders marked with a ribbon-cutting this week.
A century ago, both Indian Motorcycle and the Knox Automobile Company pumped out thousands of motorcycles and vehicles, respectively, in the Mason Square area.
But by 1927, after producing some of the first modern fire engines in the United States, the Knox plant closed up shop. 26 years later, Indian Motorcycle did the same.
A portion of the Indian Motorcycle building would be converted into almost 140 apartments in the 80s, but would later be foreclosed on – eventually passed on to the city by MassHousing and later acquired by First Resource Development Co., according to its Vice President of Facilities, Gary Nelson.
The remaining structures overshadowed parts of State Street and Wilbraham Road for years — looming and decaying before nearly a decade’s worth of development reshaped them.
"So, we built a neighborhood - today celebrates that,” Gordon Pulsifer, president and founder of First Resource Development Co., told reporters on Monday, Sept 9, ahead of a ribbon-cutting near the premises. “We've got a lot of folks coming out from Boston to see what we do here in the City of Springfield."
Pulsifer said plans to redevelop the area date back at least a dozen years. It involved rehabbing the already existing Indian Motorcycle units – sitting on a triangle in a corner of the city’s McKnight neighborhood.
It also later included the former Mason Square fire station and remaining portions of the factory. With much of that work starting in 2019, restoring the structures led to 199 units coming online over the last few years – 139 renovated, pre-existing units and 60 new apartments, the mayor's office stated in a news release.
Tackling the Knox building across Wilbraham Road wasn’t initially part of the plan, Pulsifer said. But after reviewing the parcel and learning of its history, the project came to pass – albeit, with some hurdles.
“I'm not sure if any of us knew exactly what we were getting ourselves into,” he told a crowd gathered beside the Knox building Monday. “Our architects and engineers could not even go in the building - the central stair system had collapsed … we have pieces of paper that say we can do this, but we [had] a building that's about to fall down.”
The Knox project, the center of Monday’s ribbon-cutting, totaled around $51 million and added almost another hundred units to local housing stock, according to Mayor Domenic Sarno, who said he was happy to see the fully-occupied building back on city tax rolls.
“We made this $51.3 million project work - 96 housing workforce development units are here, and this continues to add to the beautiful mosaic of Mason Square,” he said.
First Resource also benefitted from some $16 million in federal tax credits, in addition to $1.35 million in funds from the city.
The housing also became available amid what state leaders have called a housing crisis in the Commonwealth. A month after the Healey administration passed a $5.1 billion housing bond bill to address it, Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll was in Springfield for the Knox ribbon-cutting.
Driscoll says in the midst of the housing shortage, restoring old factories like those in Springfield does more than just add units – it also brings a chance to rejuvenate the surrounding area.
“Every community in Massachusetts has a housing shortage and the ability to see old, historic buildings now serving as new neighborhoods - it really brings joy to my heart,” Driscoll said. “As a former mayor, I know … that's the vitality and the quality of life that you want to see happening. Imagine this place vacant - what it means to a neighborhood, and then imagine it full with families living here - it's just a gamechanger.”
Sarno says the city is looking to bring another 600-800 units online in the near future.
