NORTHAMPTON — After accepting multiple rounds of proposals, the city has chosen a buyer for the old Water Department building at 237 Prospect St. — though it wasn’t the highest bidder for the property.
Congregation B’nai Israel, located at the synagogue next door to the property, will be purchasing the building from the city and plans to use it for administrative and programming space. The finalization of the sale is currently delayed by mutual agreement as the city has been using the building as additional space for water department employees to social distance, according to Mayor David Narkewicz.
In addition to using the building for administrative and programming space, the Jewish congregation will likely use some of the land for farming, said John Todd, a longtime member of the congregation who headed the committee that worked on the bid for the property.
Currently, the congregation runs Abundance Farm — a farm and outdoor classroom focused on Jewish food justice — in collaboration with Northampton Survival Center and Lander-Grinspoon Academy.
“In the longer run,” Todd said, “one of the visions we have for that space is to use it to support some kind of more residential type of programming.” He said the group has been talking about using it for a gap year program.
The city chose the congregation after it went through multiple requests for proposals. Those bid requests were not identical.
In October 2019, the city put out a request for proposals for the building, which stipulated that bids must be at least $290,000 and that the buyers use the property to provide a community benefit until Jan. 1, 2030. The community benefits detailed in the city’s request for proposals were food security and community agriculture; education and training in environmental sustainability and resiliency; and, intergenerational education.
A developer bid $320,000 and Congregation B’nai Israel bid $355,00, according to the bids obtained by the Gazette through a public records request. A board member of North Star Self-Directed Learning for Teens, who planned to create a nonprofit real estate trust and lease to the organization, bid $401,000. North Star is a learning center that serves as an alternative to traditional middle and high school options.
The city’s request for proposal also stated that “The sale shall be awarded to the most advantageous proposal from a responsive and responsible proposer, taking into account price only.”
That sentence was the “primary reason” the round of bids was canceled, Narkewicz said. It could be read in different ways and was confusing, he said.
“The challenge was,” he said, “you could read that as the highest bidder.”
Then in December, the city put out another request for proposals with a Jan. 28 deadline. The document was similar to the previous request, but the city struck the line “taking into account price only” and struck “intergenerational education” as a community benefit.
North Star bid $600,000 and Congregation B’nai Israel bid $427,000.
Three outside reviewers from community agriculture and sustainability organizations evaluated the proposals, according to Narkewicz.
“The unanimous review of those three reviewers was that Congregation B’nai Israel’s proposal better met the community benefit requirement,” Narkewicz said. “This was not a low bid or high bid. This had requirements for community benefits.”
“I feel comfortable with the way the process played out,” he said. “I feel that Congregation B’nai Israel has been an excellent steward of their property as well as the property they purchased from the city back in 2000s.”
North Star was not as comfortable. “We wanted it to be North Star’s future home,” said Jodi Cutler, outreach director at North Star who led the organization’s bidding on the building.
She added, “We were surprised as the high bidder not to be awarded the building in the first round … I could see it not being the sole reason for making a determination because you certainly want to meet these community benefits,” she said of the bidding price.
“But the fact that we met the community benefits and our bid was $173,000 more and we still were not awarded the building was deeply disappointing.”
Around the same time, Cutler pointed out, the mayor was proposing a Proposition 2½ override. By law, the sale of land can only be used for capital expenses though, and in this situation, the proceeds would need to be put toward a water capital project, which is paid for by a fund separate from the city’s general fund that the override would support, according to Narkewicz.
Cutler said her disappointment in the city’s decision is unrelated to Abundance Farm. “I completely support their mission,” she said.
More recently, North Star has moved on and purchased a building in Sunderland, Cutler said.
This story was updated to explain how money from the sale of city property can be used.
Greta Jochem can be reached at gjochem@gazettenet.com.