Brockton needs a spark

He sells real estate from an office in the middle of town, which is a lot harder than it was during the city’s partial renaissance a few years ago.

And this trained chemist spends a surprising amount of time thinking about electricity. He has been embroiled in the intense debate over siting a power plant in an industrial part of town.

“Brockton desperately needs a stimulus plan,’’ he said yesterday. “I don’t see how this can hurt Brockton. What is Brockton attracting now?’’

The project he refers to is a 350-megawatt electricity plant that has been on the drawing board since 2006. At one point, it appeared poised to sail through the approval process. Now, it has stalled.

Engineers say it is virtually identical, technically, to about 20 other plants across Massachusetts. It uses natural gas to turn a turbine and create electricity.

If you walked past such a plant, as I have recently, you wouldn’t even know it was there. That hasn’t stopped opposition from mobilizing in town, where there are fears that the plant could be a breeding ground for some kind of disaster.

Brockton is a city going through tough times. The tax base, not robust to start with, has eroded. The school system is abandoning busing to save money; the public libraries are looking at reduced hours. Storefronts are boarded up, and crime is creeping up. The middle class that rediscovered the city in the 1990s is having second thoughts. This might seem like a good time for a project that will pump an estimated $2 million a year in revenue into the city’s coffers.

Among the proponents is Jack Yunits, a former mayor. Yunits, who served five terms before retiring in 2006, can recall when the project had virtually no opposition. The City Council once approved it unanimously. “What has happened is that this has become a political football,’’ Yunits said. “The opposition has no merit.’’

Yunits believes the city needs the project.“If the city is going to survive this economic mess, it’s going to be by knocking on doors and bringing in business,’’ said Yunits, who has consulted for the group trying to win approval for the plant.

But many residents worry about what they see as health and safety risks from the power plant: pollutants emitted by the towering smokestacks, its proximity to elementary schools, and the need for large amounts of treated sewage water to cool the towers daily.

Among the opponents is Brockton’s current mayor, James Harrington. I wanted him to explain his opposition, given that he was president of the City Council when the same project won unanimous approval from that body.

Unfortunately, Harrington had no comment yesterday on the $350 million project in his city. Silence on such a big project is unusual for a mayor.

To its proponents, the plant is becoming a symbol of why revival is so difficult in a city such as Brockton. Projects are too easy to derail when there is no real plan for development.

In this case, the site in question is next to a waste-water facility and bunch of vacant property. The options for developing the area are too few to allow one to slip away.

“When you stop growing, you start dying,’’ Yunits said. “That’s true of people, and it’s true of cities.’’

Montrand is blunt: “The only ones holding it up are politicians. They’re not doing Brockton any favors.’’

For decades, Brockton has been a city in which spurts of prosperity alternated with long stretches of scuffling. The idea is to keep the periods of struggle as short as possible.

Even finicky Cambridge long ago made its peace with the kind of plant that has Brockton in a tizzy. It’s right by the CambridgeSide Galleria, and if you didn’t know they were making electricity inside, you could mistake it for a big bakery.

Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.