Still more than a whiff of old woes in Chelsea

CHELSEA -- For years, summertime in Chelsea has meant far more than backyard barbecues, ice cream, and cold horchata in Miguel Amaya's refrigerator. It has also meant the smell of rotting cow hides, wafting down the streets and into Amaya's home.

"Just imagine the smell of an animal -- dead," said Amaya, who lives southeast of downtown Chelsea near a pelt-sorting facility called Boston Hides & Furs. "It's something like that."

Odors like this one have lingered for years over Chelsea, an industrial hub just across the Tobin Bridge from Boston. But the city has made a concerted effort recently to acquire blighted buildings, replace old factories with new loft developments, and, as part of the redevelopment effort, generally improve the city's scent.

Malodorous offenders such as Boston Hides & Furs and petroleum storage facilities have been persuaded to make changes such as installing air-filtration systems. The smell of animal flesh and diesel fumes, once pervasive in parts of the city, has dissipated, according to city health officials and residents.

Even so, some living near the pelt-sorting facility are not happy. Although the company says it has spent more than $250,000, including an air filtration system and new loading docks, to reduce its odor, neighbors swear they can still smell dead cow, especially on warm afternoons. Key community organizers, who helped bring the odor issue to the forefront two years ago, are now selling their houses or planning to sell.

Nelson Martinez, who has lived across the street from Boston Hides & Furs since late 2003, said he wants to move with his wife and two children. He posted a "For Sale" sign in his front yard recently and said he hopes he can move his family by the end of summer.

"It still smells," he said.

Chelsea, with its easy access to Boston Harbor, has been an attractive location for industry for more than a century, attracting everything from textile manufacturers to rubber companies. With industry came jobs as well as odors that, in time, people came to tolerate in the way that one tolerates trash in the gutters or youths hanging out on street corners.

Jay Ash, the city manager, remembers growing up in Chelsea in the 1960s and simply getting used to the smell of burnt rubber emanating from a nearby plant. But in recent years, city officials have set out to change the image and the smell of this working-class city beneath the Tobin Bridge.

In 2004, an old textile plant became residential lofts. With encouragement from the city and help from its redevelopment agency, land once occupied by a box company and mattress business is slated to become housing in the fall, Ash said.

In the meantime, the city has targeted the stinkiest businesses, including the hides company and Chelsea Sandwich LLC/Global Petroleum Corp.

"We are about promoting Chelsea as a good place to live," Ash said, "and part of that is to deal with the quality-of-life issues that people face in urban environments. And odors are one of them."

Among these odors, the ones that come from Boston Hides & Furs are particularly notorious. At the Inspectional Services Department in Chelsea City Hall, records of complaints and permits are organized in file cabinets by street address, except when it comes to Boston Hides & Furs. The pelt-sorting company -- which grades, salts, and ships hides to tanneries all over the world -- gets its own label and half a drawer to itself, thick with accounts about its stench.

"I could be cutting my lawn or having a cookout, and I'd have to go in my house because of the smell," said Amy Gomez, who like many neighbors bought her house during the colder months of the year and did not know about the summertime stench. "Just imagine the heat and blood and hides and fresh cow."

In a 2001 Globe article, Harvey Shore, the former chief financial officer of Boston Hides & Furs and now a consultant for the company, disputed that there has ever been blood at the facility. But years ago, Shore admits, there were problems. In late 2005, residents, who had lived with the smell for years, finally got fed up, leading to a series of tense meetings.

"You would have thought we were killing people," Shore said in an interview this month. "Some of the early meetings were so bad I wanted to cry."

Neighbors said they just wanted to breathe fresh air. Company officials said they were just trying to do their job. A deal was ultimately struck in February 2006 in which the company agreed to make changes, including installing the air-filtration system and building canopies over its loading docks to prevent smells from wafting into the neighborhood.

The air-filtration system went in last summer, Shore said, and the canopies could be installed as early as this week. Meanwhile, Shore added, the company has cut volume in half at the Chelsea facility by steering work to out-of-state plants and has taken steps to improve its general image, planting new landscaping and donating $500 last spring to Chelsea Collaborative, the nonprofit that helped organize neighbors.

"The bottom line is, we're here," said the company's chief operations officer, Antonietta Andreottola. "We want to stay here. But we want everyone to be happy with us."

That does not seem likely, even with the changes. Complaints about the pelt-sorting facility are down this summer, falling from scores to just four, the city says.

Boston Hides & Furs is still handling an estimated 500 shipping containers this year filled with animal skins. With that, many believe, there will always be some sort of odor and a certain amount of frustration.

"Come here," Amaya said one recent afternoon, wheeling into his backyard and sticking his nose into the wind. He could not smell anything, not just now. But Amaya -- who, like Martinez, plans to put his house on the market -- is sure the smell will be back soon.

It has taunted him, he said, since he bought his house in February 2005. But he is done making complaints, he said. "I don't bother anymore."

Keith O'Brien can be reached at kobrien@globe.com.