The first redevelopment stops for a plan that will include 546 housing units at a former industrial site that has gone through an extensive cleanup in recent years will go before the Nashua Planning Board on Feb. 15.
The Mohawk Tannery/Fimbel Door Redevelopment project by Blaylock Holdings LLC calls for 546 apartments and condominiums, as well as green space and a resident recreation area that includes a canoe and kayak launch. A conceptual plan from last year also shows a pedestrian bridge across the Nashua River to Mine Falls Park.
The Planning Committee will present 3 subdivision programs for the site at the February 15 meeting. The pieces were removed from the Feb. 1 agenda.
The redevelopment portion of the assignment begins as a $14. 3 million cleanup of the tannery site is underway. The cleanup will need to be approved through the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. before the structure can begin.
The 40 acres are bordered by the Veterans Memorial Parkway, the Nashua River, and the Fairmount Heights neighborhood. It’s across the river from Mine Falls Park. Existing owners of the areas affected by the progression are the City of Nashua, Fimbel Door Corp. , Chester Realty Trust, J. K. S. Realty LLC and L. J. J. LLC Real Estate. Blaylock Holdings is the developer.
The development area includes the 30.54-acre former Mohawk Tannery Site, which is owned by Chester Realty Trust; the 4.98-acre Fimbel Door Corp. site and the 4.4-acre Row parcel between Fimbel Door and the parkway.
The nine buildings proposed for progression would have space for 230 apartments in 4 4-story buildings adjacent to Veterans Memorial Parkway and 316 condominiums in five 4- and five-story buildings in the center of the site, according to a concept plan presented to citizens last March. . .
Phase I of the construction, beginning with the planning board approvals, would last through early 2026. By the end of 2025, there would be 57 completed apartments and 63 completed condo units at the site. There would be 172 apartments by the end of 2026, and a complete 230 by the end of 2027. The condo development would progress more slowly, with about 60-70 a year until all 316 are completed in 2030, according to the conceptual plan.
Blaylock will donate $2. 3 million to the Nashua Affordable Housing Trust Fund and 20 percent of the apartments will be affordable housing, according to the concept plan.
Estimated annual taxes on the assets would be approximately $1. 9 million in 2029, the first full year of construction, through the 2023 filing.
Some 10 acres along the river will be given to the city for new green space. The pedestrian bridge, which Mayor Jim Donchess refers to as a “future dream” in an August online post, would be financed by a $3 million bond issue.
The plan-making committee will create 3 subdivision programs for the site, including:
EPA, Blaylock and City Spouse on Cleanup
Mohawk Tannery occupied the 30. 58 acres on the banks of the Nashua River from 1924 to 1984, producing tanned hides for leather. The owners paid little attention to the poisonous nature of the waste they were tossing peacefully into the lagoons right next to the river, and into the river itself. In the 40 years since its closure, it has remained a dangerous, empty, fenced-in oasis in downtown Nashua, while the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been forced to protect the environment. The U. S. government worked to cover it up. It has become the EPA’s Granite State Leathers. SuperfundArray
The EPA announced an agreement in February 2021 with Blaylock Holdings to clean up and develop the site after more than two years of public hearings and negotiation. The $14.3 million cleanup was funded with $6 million from the EPA, a $3 million New Hampshire Business Finance Authority loan, a $2 million city of Nashua loan financed by the BFA, and $3.3 million in private equity raised by Blaylock.
At the time the cleanup was announced, the EPA called it a “one-time” cost-sharing arrangement that will save $8 million “of taxpayer money,” compared to the cleanup the EPA would do itself. The cleanup was designed to remove hazardous ingredients from the soil and sludge as well as debris from the site and “when completed, will pose a risk to human health and the environment. “
The 4.98-acre Fimbel Door property is also considered environmentally sensitive and will also be made safe as part of the redevelopment project.
The Mohawk tannery dumped its waste into lagoons a few meters from the Nashua River, as well as into a series of pits and drainage basins in and around the tannery’s buildings, the EPA said.
“The sludge and soils in those spaces are infected with heavy metals, semi-volatile biological compounds, and/or dioxins,” the EPA said. The company also decided that there was asbestos in the soil.
“These contaminants have been exposed lately in the open lagoon and in the surface soils of some site locations,” the agency’s site assessment says ahead of the ongoing cleanup. “Most of the waste is in the northern plot, in the old lagoons adjacent to the Nashua River. “
A March 2023 PowerPoint presented at a network assembly on the task includes a 1976 excerpt from the Nashua Telegraph detailing Mohawk’s struggles to find an environmentally friendly way to dispose of poison sludge produced at the plant.
Eight years later, in May 1984, after lawsuits filed through citizens and organizations, the EPA filed a lawsuit against the tannery’s owners. The tannery closed its doors and the 30 acres along the river were left as an empty and poisonous place.
The EPA from 2000-2002 cleaned up asbestos and other hazardous material at the site, and continued to work with the owners on keeping the hazardous waste there from becoming more of a problem.
The site proposed inclusion on the National Priorities List in 2000 because the tannery had discharged wastewater containing hazardous ingredients such as chromium, zinc and phenol directly into the Nashua River and had disposed of sludge containing hazardous ingredients such as chromium, pentachlorophenol, phenol and 2 ,4,6-trichlorophenol in the unlined disposal spaces of the site.
The site was never added to the list, at the city’s request, because of its prospect as a progression site, according to the EPA’s site history. The logic is probably that a developer would take on some of the emergent cleanup charge. In 2018, nearly 20 years after its proposal was listed, but not included, Blaylock, the city and the EPA began discussing the progression project, and the agreement was announced in December 2021.
Before the agreement was reached, citizens attending public comment sessions were involved that the proposed mitigation procedures would not be sufficient and that the site would not be for citizens. The EPA said at the time that the overall removal of all pollutants would cost more than $32 million.
Blaylock’s cleanup includes excavating hazardous waste from the tannery, fabrics from landfills, and fabrics containing asbestos; Waste disposal in a newly built waste containment mobile and general recovery of the property. The containment mobile will use “the most complex fabrics and technology, adding a cap and vertical barrier designed to meet EPA’s needs under Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Responsibility. “Act, the National Petroleum and Hazardous Substances Pollution (NCP) Contingency Plan, and the overall cleanup plan,” the EPA said.
Over the decades, the place remained empty and, despite the fences, was vandalized, invaded and burned. Construction at the site was not razed until 2012, after several arson attacks ended.
“This cleanup and redevelopment will reduce risk to human health and the environment and provide significant economic opportunity, much needed residential housing and bring an otherwise abandoned property back into productive use,” the EPA says in a fact sheet about the cleanup history of the site.
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