The Eagle Mill project reached perhaps its most important milestone last month when local and state officials, including Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, visited the mill to announce a $4.9 million MassWorks Infrastructure Program grant to upgrade water lines and support residential and commercial development.
Mill Renaissance LLC must still obtain site plan approval, conservation commission approval, the allocation of historic tax credits and additional commercial. Developer Jeffrey Cohen hopes to start construction on the $60 million project in the fourth quarter of 2019.
Saint James Placehas announced that Leigh Davis, director of development at Mill Renaissance LLC and Eagle Mill Redevelopment LLC, has been elected to its board of directors.
“It preserves historic assets. These are unique town assets. You just don't want them to go by the wayside."
-- Developer Jeffrey Cohen, on acquiring the former New Haven rail station in Lee, Mass.
“It preserves historic assets. These are unique town assets. You just don't want them to go by the wayside."
-- Developer Jeffrey Cohen, on acquiring the former New Haven rail station in Lee, Mass.
"We're designing a similar project to the one in Great Barrington. Downtown Lee is like Great Barrington's. It's a vibrant New England downtown. It's where people want to live."
-- Michael Charles of Benchmark Development
Davis will report directly to principal developer Jeffrey N. Cohen on projects including a $70 million revitalization of the historic Eagle Mill in Lee and the revitalization of the Spinning Mill, a 225,000-square-foot mill in Adams.
The project, which will include both new construction and reuse of the mill, would add retail and office space, restaurants, a health club and pool open to the public, and in excess of 100 units of housing.
"I like the whole project. It's a big change for Lee but in the right direction.” Without it, the abandoned mill would "just be blight in the town."
--- Lee Planning Board Chairman and Selectman Tom Wickham
Developer Jeffrey Cohen of Mill Renaissance LLC said he modified his roughly $70 million redevelopment plan somewhat after two “significant” real estate development and construction companies approached him with the idea of a partnership to build an 85-room hotel.
Developer Jeffrey Cohen says the town should deal with the property no matter who eventually develops it since it will require the town’s capacities in both finding funding and shouldering liability for the legacy of dry cleaning chemicals that are still migrating across town in groundwater.
At least a half dozen offers to buy the property have come in over the nine years it has been on the market, but the offers were too low to clear debts to the town and the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection.
“There is a chronic risk to current postal workers exposed to basement air at the [Great Barrington] Post Office due to naphthalene, PCE and TCE” left from the adjacent Ried Cleaners, an environmental consultant concluded.
“You lose the culture, lose the history...but maybe we say to hell with that and clear the whole site — we have six acres on the water in a nice area of town.”
--- Renaissance Mill LLC developer, Jeffrey Cohen
