Strategy to boost revenues

Policy could aid Southwood's sale

Officials in Norfolk, which faces a potential $1 million budget shortfall for next fiscal year, hope to use a two-year-old state law that speeds permitting for economic development projects as a way to boost the town's tax revenues.

Faster permitting to get properties such as the 88-acre site of the shuttered Caritas Southwood Hospital on the tax rolls won't be a panacea for Norfolk's fiscal problems, but it would help, Town Administrator Jack Hathaway said.

"We're doing this to inspire people to have an interest in the property," Hathaway said of the hospital site, on Route 1A near the Walpole line, which has sat idle for five years.

"We want to market it and make it shovel ready," he said. "There's a lot of tax money we're not getting right now."

Other area communities using Chapter 43D, the state law authorizing the "expedited permitting" system, include Boylston, Marlborough, Medway, Shrewsbury, and Watertown, according to state records.

The Route 1A property in Norfolk had been home to the Pondville State Hospital, which opened in the 1920s as one of the nation's first cancer treatment facilities. It was acquired by the Caritas Christi Health Care organization in 1997 and renamed Caritas Southwood Hospital, but the Catholic-affiliated system closed the aging facility in 2003 because of financial difficulties, and has been trying to find a buyer for some time.

Some older buildings have been razed, but six, totaling about 200,000 square feet, still stand.

What has complicated a potential sale is the presence of oil and medical-waste dumps on the property, officials said.

Ed Coletta, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said Caritas Southwood Hospital Inc., as the owner of the property, is responsible for cleaning up the pollution.

Coletta said the oil contamination occurred in the late 1950s or 1960s when oil leaked from a storage tank under one of the buildings. About 2,000 cubic yards of the oil has been cleaned up "but there is a lot more contamination under the building," he said. The medical waste in a landfill has not been cleaned up, he said, but there is no sign that any contamination has traveled off site.

Caritas Christi spokeswoman Mary Wallen said the excavation of the oil contamination occurred before Caritas took on the property. However, the company has fenced off the landfill, as requested by the DEP. Estimates to clean up all contamination are at $8.5 million, an expense that has kept Caritas from going ahead with the project.

Wallen also said Caritas wants the property's eventual buyer to take on the responsibility for the cleanup, rather than have to cover the cost itself.

"That's our hope," she said.

In July, Caritas, which is owned by the Archdiocese of Boston, tried to sell the property at auction. But the $2 million high bid was deemed unacceptable by the healthcare system.

Wallen said there was "some very preliminary" examination of a possible sale of the land to a commercial group recently, "but no agreement was reached." She declined to name the interested party.

At one point, the Route 1A land was slated for an over-55 housing complex floated by developer Pulte Homes. It called for 275 age-restricted units that would have yielded roughly $2 million a year in tax revenue for Norfolk with little draw on town services except for public safety, Hathaway said.

The plan fell through because of the high cost of the environmental cleanup, he and others said.

Norfolk and Walpole officials met in recent years to discuss developing the land to benefit both communities. But nothing came of it. At an Oct. 28 Board of Selectmen's meeting, Walpole officials agreed to ask Norfolk to inform them of any developments.

The value of the land, privately appraised at $5.5 million and zoned for mixed-use development, would likely top $10 million were it not contaminated, officials said.

Wallen said Caritas is eager to talk with anyone interested in the site.

Promoting commercial development is a priority in Norfolk since the town, like others in Massachusetts, is facing a dismal fiscal future.

For months, town officials have been anticipating a $1 million shortfall for the fiscal year starting next July as costs mount and revenues decline. A vote by town residents last spring against a $414,000 tax increase last spring didn't help, officials said, nor did a nearly $200,000 cut in the state's mitigation payment for Norfolk hosting a prison facility. The picture became even bleaker amid recent predictions of cuts in state aid to communities of up to 10 percent.

Selectman Ramesh Advani, the board's chairman, said the town has been working hard to lay the groundwork to get the Caritas property on the tax rolls. He said that once the site is cleaned up, it would be good for a biotechnology facility, since it is near a commuter rail line as well as Route 1 and Interstate 95. He said Caritas or a new owner might be able to get a brownfield grant to assist in the cleanup.

"The hangup is getting a buyer," he said.

Advani also said this is the first year the town is getting a small payment in lieu of taxes from Caritas, which he estimated at about $30,000.

Under the terms of the 43D statute, which was accepted by Town Meeting voters in May, Norfolk officials received a $60,000 state grant to establish an interagency permitting board. Some money will pay for software to manage the process, the creation of a guide book, and further traffic and waste-water studies, Hathaway said.

"We still need a couple of months of work before we're ready to go," he said.

The expedited permitting process can be used on sites given priority status for commercial or industrial developments. It sets a 180-day deadline for local permitting decisions, including wetlands reviews by the community's conservation commission; special permits and site plan reviews by the zoning and planning boards; flammable materials licenses; historic district issues; and Title V and other septic rulings. Building permits and subdivision plan approvals are not covered by the time limit.

Once the accelerated process begins, a community has to wrap up its permitting within the 180 days, or the development is approved by default.

In exchange for agreeing to the expedited process under Chapter 43D, a community is eligible for help paying for consultants, environmental cleanup efforts, and marketing the development site, and may collect special fees for priority permit applications, according to a fact sheet on the state's website, www.mass.gov.

Michele Morgan Bolton can be reached at mmbolton1@verizon.net