This month, there are two important new developments in the revitalization of downtown.
The first is the opening of the Hayes building on Granite Street on Sept. 21. Those who have been in Haverhill for many years will recall that the long vacant building on Granite Street was once used by AT&T. More recently, except for a karate studio, it has been largely vacant over the past 50 years.
As part of our efforts to revitalize downtown, a year and a half ago we met with people from the Planning Office for Urban Affairs. The Planning Office, as it is called, is an arm of the Archdiocese of Boston and builds what is known as "workforce housing." Workforce housing is housing for working men and women, including new school teachers, starting police officers, new firefighters and young people starting out in life who cannot afford to buy their own homes.
The planning office was seeking to build some workforce housing in the city of Haverhill. Its representatives became interested in the long-vacant Hayes building.
Like many old factory buildings in downtown Haverhill, the Hayes building lacked adequate parking. This presented us with an opportunity to revitalize an old building and to have a parking garage built at the same time.
Over the last year and a half, we worked closely with the developers of the building and with the MVRTA, which was building a new parking garage for the city of Haverhill.
We were able to persuade the developers to pay to lease parking spaces in the new parking garage. We were able to persuade the MVRTA to lease some spaces to the tenants in the new building.
The result?
The new development helped to fund the parking garage and the parking garage would not have been possible without it.
The parking garage will help to provide parking for the tenants at Hayes building and the redevelopment of the Hayes building would not have been possible without the parking garage.
All in all, the Hayes building and the new parking garage created a partnership that worked well for the developer, the parking garage and the people of Haverhill.
The Hayes building opens on Sept. 21 and we are expecting Cardinal Sean O'Malley to join in the celebration.
The very next day, Sept. 22, Gov. Deval Patrick will be in Haverhill for the groundbreaking on the new $11 million parking garage right across the street from the Hayes building.
These two buildings are part of $130 million reinvestment in our downtown. That reinvestment has added hundreds of thousands of dollars to tax rolls, provided hundreds of temporary construction jobs, and provided customers for the downtown restaurants.
It is part of the remake of downtown that has given us national publicity and which caused yahoo.com recently to say that downtown Haverhill had one of the best restaurant districts in the entire country. Please join me on Sept. 21 and 22 as we celebrate the next phase of our downtown revitalization. It will be two exciting days for our city.
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Haverhill Mayor James Fiorentini contributes this weekly column. You can reach him in the mayor's office in City Hall at 978-374-2300.
