NORTHAMPTON — The owner of St. John Cantius Church has rejected the city’s offer to buy the historic structure at 10 Hawley St., leaving officials to continue looking for a downtown location to build the planned Community Resilience Hub.
“Unfortunately, I can report that our offer on St. John Cantius has been formally rejected, as of today, in writing,” Mayor David Narkewicz told the City Council’s Finance Committee on Thursday night. “That is no longer an option.”
Wayne Feiden, the city’s planning and sustainability director, sent a letter to O’Connell Development Group of Holyoke earlier this month, offering $550,000 for St. John Cantius. The developer wants to tear down the vacant church, built in 1904, and build five townhomes on the site; the city proposed using the building as a place where people facing displacement or other challenges could be connected with appropriate resources and services.
The Central Business Architecture Committee, which is considering whether to grant O’Connell a demolition permit, is set to meet again on Tuesday, Nov. 9, at 6:30 p.m.
Narkewicz offered an alternative in the form of an order declaring surplus land, which would free up a parcel behind City Hall either for private development of affordable housing or for a public-private partnership that incorporates affordable housing units into a new Community Resilience Hub building.
The order describes the parcel as “the city’s property extending from the Puchalski Municipal Office Building to the Roundhouse bus station driveway to Crafts Avenue, to the southerly most parking spaces in the city hall parking lot.”
The resilience hub would be intended for “any residents who face chronic and acute stress due to disasters, pandemics, climate change, and other social and economic challenges” and would connect people with needed resources and services, the surplus land order reads.
In an interview Monday, Feiden said the city has not decided if it will need to use the authority granted under the surplus land order because it remains unclear if a private use — affordable housing — will be included in the final Community Resilience Hub plan, or if building a new structure will be necessary.
Feiden told the Finance Committee that building just the resilience hub could be too expensive. The work would require “digging into the hillside,” and “if you’re just doing one use, it might be hard to justify that entire expense.”
The order authorizes the mayor “to transfer deeds, easements, and/or leases for the land for affordable housing and/or a community resilience hub, subject to restrictions and conditions that the Mayor imposes to accomplish these needs.”
The order received a positive recommendation to the full City Council, then passed its first reading.
“Downtown studio apartments are especially important to help transition people who are experiencing houselessness or who face extreme housing burdens,” the order reads.
Narkewicz said that the entrance to any proposed building would face the Roundhouse Plaza. Feiden, speaking to the committee, said that under the city’s current thinking, the resilience hub could comprise the lower two floors of a five-story building, and affordable housing units could be built on the higher floors.
“As a city, we’ve been talking a lot about infill development and how we can maximize land, and how we can create housing systems downtown,” Narkewicz told the Finance Committee. “Even if it does not end up being the resilience hub, it could provide this important affordable housing in the heart of our downtown.”
Narkewicz said the city continues to search for an existing structure downtown that can be retrofitted to become the resilience hub.
Brian Steele can be reached at bsteele@gazettenet.com.