City to Buy Downtown Parking Lot for $235K

The city is intent on buying another parcel of land downtown to help cement future revitalization plans for the area.

That land is the municipal parking lot on Mill Street across from the and the . Now with the authorization in hand, Mayor Ted Bettencourt will be seeking to close on a purchase and sale agreement for the site for $235,000 with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority in the next month or so.

Bettencourt says ownership of the land will make future revitalization efforts in the area easier along with construction for the -- new twin culverts would run underneath the parking lot out to Wallis Street where the North River becomes visible again.

He also says the parking lot could be used as a staging area during construction.

Bettencourt appeared before the City Council on Thursday, asking for authorization to pursue a purchase and sale agreement with the MBTA. He plans to pay for the land with grant funds the city received for flood mitigation work.

"We know that the MBTA will not be doing any improvement on that property, and right now it's in pretty rough shape," he told councilors.

He also feared that with the financial instability the MBTA continues to experience, the state agency may look to sell the land to someone else if the city doesn't buy it. And that could produce a major obstacle in the future.

Bettencourt said it seems many people don't realize the city doesn't own the property, although using it as a municipal lot -- instead, Peabody leases it from the MBTA for $1 a year, an arrangement that has existed since 1983.

The lot, which covers 28,300 square feet and contains 57 spaces, is currently only used for permit parking for downtown businesses. And only several businesses appear to make use of it, paying the city $100 for an annual permit to allow employees to park there. Most days, the lot is only half full at best.

Bettencourt says he has a few ideas in mind for the underutilized parking lot, such as a good spot for a multi-story/multi-use parking garage. He added that there are other options as well.

Councilors ultimately agreed that owning the land would be a good investment for the city and unanimously approved the request.

Bettencourt and city councilor Dave Gravel first suggested the site could be an ideal spot for a parking garage a few years ago when the council was in the thick of rezoning the downtown.

During the campaign last fall, while his opponent Sean Fitzgerald wanted the city to build a parking garage right in the square where the Foster Street lot is.

On Thursday, city councilor Anne Manning-Martin first wanted assurance that if the city does dig up the lot during the flood project, it isn't going to suddenly be saddled with environmental cleanup costs for yet another brownfield site downtown.

Across the street, at 45 Walnut St., sits 1.3 acres the city purchased a few years ago to turn into a public park. The grand design for the former tannery site , however, after city officials learned there were additional pollutants in the ground than first thought.

"It's not a brownfield," said Community Development Director Karen Sawyer, noting there was no history of contamination on the Mill Street site.

Earth borings that were taken on the site in relation to the flood project likewise indicated no contaminants were buried underground, she said.

City assessors' records show the land is valued at $187,600 for the current fiscal year, but a separate appraisal just completed by Robert Noone, a member of the Board of Assessors, came back with a fair market value of $255,000 for the land. Noone compared the pending sale with recent sales on commercial land in Danvers, Salem and Lynn.

Bettencourt said that number actually includes some overdue licensing fees -- the land itself was appraised at about $200,000.