SOUTHBRIDGE - The lobbying effort began in 1992. The lease negotiations began in earnest in 1998. The original plan has gone from a 7,400-job U.S. Defense Department finance center to a 450-job Defense Department accounting training facility and related hotel and conference center. After years of work and planning, the lease for the project, to be built at the former American Optical Co. campus, is almost ready to be signed.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, acting as the real estate negotiator for the Defense Department, published a legal notice in today’s News, detailing plans to demolish most of the former American Optical Co. Main Plant and replace it with government offices and hotel and conference center facilities. The entire facility will cost $80 million to build.

According to U.S. Senate documents dated Aug. 27, 1999, the federal government will pay an annual rent of $9.6 million over the course of a 20-year lease. However, sources close to the situation say the final details of the lease are being worked out between Franklin Realty Advisors, Inc., of Boston, and the Army Corps.

Franklin manages the entire former AO complex, owned by Southbridge Associates Limited Partnership, the real estate subsidiary of American Optical Co., now headquartered in Greenwich, Conn.

“We’ve been in serious talks with the Army Corps since January 1998,” Franklin’s John Soursourian said.

Congressman Richard Neal, D-Springfield, told the Southbridge Evening News last night that he expects the lease will be signed soon after Congress receives notification that the lease negotiations are completed. The congressman said the notification may occur by next week.

“It looks like we’re there,” Neal said. “I’m most gratified. The signing of the lease is imminent. This entire effort is a tribute to the faith the people of Southbridge have shown over and over.”

Although Corps officials would not comment on the notice nor the ongoing talks, the notice says in part that several sites in Southbridge were considered for use as DOD facilities, but were rejected, because of their “remote locations, no community infrastructure, environmental concerns, inadequate size, poor topography and limited road access.”

The notice mentions that the facilities will be located in a flood plain in front of the Quinebaug River. Its publication begins a 15-day public comment period to the Corps, as required by federal law when building a military project within a flood plain.

Plans call for the demolition of most of the 420,000 square-foot former Main Plant, built in sections between 1899 and 1965. The 650-foot long Mechanic Street facade, the facade’s five stair towers, along with the 1903 clock tower, including the former AO president’s offices and the main marble staircase will be preserved. The view from Mechanic Street will change little.

“We’re going to make hotel rooms out of the clock tower building and we’ll get the clock working again,” Soursourian said.

The old brick plant will be replaced by a 204-room hotel and conference center, and secure offices and training facilities for the DOD. Once the hotel and center is up and running, the Defense Department wants to hold 19 two-week financial training sessions annually, with an average of 180 of its employees participating.

Any hotel rooms not used by the government will be available for rental by the public. The 315,000-square-foot facilities will also include a conference center and health club available to the public. The hotel will be run by a hotel chain, as yet to be selected, to be hired by Franklin.

Soursourian said that if the lease is signed this month, then demolition should be completed by May. Construction will begin immediately, with the schedule calling for it to be completed in 18 months.

The 70 DOD employees and government contractors who have been working in the Main Plant since late 1996 will move this month to temporary quarters in the former 2L Building, now known as 50 Optical Dr., across the river. Passersby on East Main Street can recognize the 90-year-old rectangular building by its distinctive milky white windows.

When the facilities are completed, it’s expected there will be about 150 DOD employees and another 300 people working at the hotel and conference center.
 
 
 
 

Lobbying hard

Neal said it’s wonderful to see that victory is right around the corner. Neal and Bay State Sen. Edward Kennedy started an intense Washington lobbying effort in March 1993, after then-Defense Secretary Les Aspin scrapped the original nationwide site selection competition for a DOD finance office, saying that he didn’t like the fact that communities were in competition for federal jobs.

Neal and Kennedy began lobbying hard, taking their case to the White House.

“Senator Kennedy and myself made it very clear about Southbridge’s case when we talked to the president,” Neal said.

By June 1993, when Aspin announced a new siting process and admitted that Southbridge had won a 4,000-job center in the competition he had scrapped three months before, Neal and Kennedy had already told Bill Clinton about how important a federal center would be to the area.

During a presidential trip to Boston on June 19, Neal, Kennedy, U.S. Sen. John Kerry, Southbridge Town Manager Florence Chandler, Tri-Community Area Chamber of Commerce President Mark Murphy and Chamber Legislative Liaison Michael Coughlin met privately with Clinton.

“We were in the limousine with the president and we impressed upon him the fact that Southbridge had won in the original competition and that it was vital to the area that a DOD facility come here,” said Neal. “The lobbying was intense.”

From that meeting came Clinton’s often-quoted statement, “I am aware of Southbridge.”

‘Change Southbridge’s identity’

Over the next year the Chamber coordinated aggressive petition drives and letter and postcard writing campaigns, including almost 20,000 “Postcards to the President,” with pre-addressed postcards bearing personal messages poured into the White House.

“No one will ever know all the work that went into this. The people of the area would not let it go away,” Chandler, now retired in Florida, said recently. “I spoke to Senator Kennedy on the day Aspin pulled the plug, and he told me ‘I’ll do what I can.’ Well, he did.”

Coughlin, a former congressional aide, pulled out all the stops.

“Mike (Coughlin) got us in to see people, people I never would have expected to meet,” Murphy told The News. “Here I was a kid from Worcester, Massachusetts, and I was going to the White House. It was fun.”

Coughlin said he knew they had a strong case, so he was going to do all he could to present it.

“We had won the first nationwide site selection competition,” he said. “We knew we could provide the facilities the DOD needed. It was a matter of convincing key federal decision makers that Southbridge could do the job.”

Former Southbridge Councilor and local businessman Ed Galonek was also instrumental in the lobbying effort.

“I don’t remember how many trips we took to Washington,” he said. “We saw some real heavy hitters, congressmen and senators and cabinet people. We were small town America, trying to tell the politicians that we had won the national competition fair and square and we didn’t get our prize.”

Town Council Chairman Laurent McDonald was deeply involved in the lobbying effort.

“It’s been a long road, but our trips to Washington have been productive,” he said. “This facility will change Southbridge’s identity from a mill town, like it was. Southbridge has always been a good place to live, but this will make it better. The lobbying took a long time, but when you deal with the federal government it takes awhile.”

However, an important turning point came in Sturbridge, not Washington.

“It was the late summer of ‘93, and Senator Kennedy had brought (then) Defense Secretary William Perry up to the area,” Galonek said. “I was sitting with him at the Host Hotel, just talking, when he said he’d always had a desire and a dream to have a Defense Department training center. That’s what we ended up getting.”

On May 3, 1994, Perry announced that Southbridge would host a DOD financial education and training center. Unlike the former plans for a large DOD facility within the old AO Main Plant, Soursourian said they decided to demolish most the building and start over.

“The old ‘finger’ buildings jutting out from the back of the Main Plant facade were going to be quite inefficient as hotel and conference space,” he said. “They were just too narrow, with a tremendous wall area to heat and carpets to vacuum. Retrofitting the old space would cause many problems. Besides, what we’re building now will allow much easier construction of the secure space the government needs.”

DOD Project Outline

With the exception of the Mechanic Street facade, the 1903 clock tower, the facade’s five stair towers and the marble staircase, the building will be demolished, with new facilities built in its place.

• Construction cost: $80 million

• Contract: John Moriarty Associates, Winchester, Mass.

The total project is 315,000 square feet, including:

• a three-story, 150,000 square-foot, 204-room hotel;

• a four-story, 150,000 square-foot conference center and secure DOD office facility;

• a 10,000 square-foot courtyard, with its own dining room and pub;

• a two-story, semi-circular, all glass concourse;

• the conference center, on the first floor, will include a 4,800 square-foot ballroom available for public use, which can be temporarily partitioned into sections, for smaller gatherings.

Also on the first floor:

• a fitness center available to the public, with a full-size swimming pool, along with basketball and racquetball courts.

• The DOD will occupy the upper two floors, with 32,000 square feet of secure office space and 40,000 square feet of secure conference space.

• Length of lease: 20 years.

• Federal government’s annual rent to AO: $9.6 million.

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