SPRINGFIELD -- At-Large City Councilor Sean F. Curran said this week that a car-rattling experience felt by many drivers on the Liberty Street corridor needs to come to an end.
Curran’s comments came amid news that the Springfield Plaza, a 72-acre complex that fronts Liberty Street, is headed to foreclosure on Oct. 14, its owners having defaulted on a $30 million loan. The property includes a Stop & Shop supermarket and stores that include a vacant, 70,000-square-foot shell of a Kmart that closed in 2017, and the relocation of a Koffee Kup Bake Shop in 2020.
“Is it any wonder that businesses are leaving?” Curran said in a prepared release. “Patrons of the Springfield Plaza risk losing a tire just driving over the bumps in the road.”
Curran said that with the city receiving approximately $127 million in federal COVID-19 recovery funds, he is hoping that some can be earmarked for the Liberty Street project.
The funds under the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) include provisions that allow for community economic development initiatives.
Curran is calling on the city’s Economic Development department to re-focus its energy on the Liberty Street and St. James Avenue business district. Both streets connect to Chicopee.
Specifically, Curran is proposing the department work to: repave Liberty Street from the Springfield Plaza to the Armory Street rotary, a distance of more than a mile: bringing in lighting improvements to the area: and offer small business grants for facade improvements to “so they can improve signage and update the look outside of their stores.”
“The Springfield Plaza, Liberty and St. James is a vital center for thousands Springfield residents,” Curran said. “The city needs to do more to support business in this district. Let’s turn this around.”
Timothy Sheehan, the city’s chief development officer, said his department would welcome the opportunity to work with the Department of Public Works on the Liberty Street-St. James Avenue effort “as it has on similarly scaled projects in other neighborhoods.”
The plea for the use of COVID-19 funds for improvements to neighborhood commercial business districts has been “a consistent theme” at recent neighborhood council meetings conducted by Mayor Domenic J. Sarno, Sheehan said. The issue of the Liberty Street challenges has come up at neighborhood meetings in Liberty Heights and East Springfield, he said.
“Large scale infrastructure improvements on major arterials as Councilor Curran understandably wants to see advanced requires coordinated planning through the Department of Public Works (DPW) and the utilities involved as well as the allocation of resources to do the work,” Sheehan said.
Public Works Director Christopher Cignoli said the entire length of L:iberty Street, extending more than 2 miles, is in need of paving, but competes with many other projects involving roads in deteriorated condition.
It could be pursued over the next two to five years, depending on funding sources, he said.
He agreed with Sheehan that all neighborhoods are clamoring for infrastructure improvements. and might be aided by the proposed federal infrastructure bill under consideration by Congress.
Lighting improvements on the corridor would need an investment from Eversource, which owns the street lights, Cignoli said.
Cathy Mossi, president of the Hungry Hill Neighborhood Council, said her group did bring up the Liberty Street corridor issue at the mayor’s meeting on the use of ARPA funds. The corridor does need improvement” she said.
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