Bellows Falls Trustees moving to declare former Chemco building unsafe

By TORY DENIS
[email protected]
BELLOWS FALLS, Vt. — A hulking, empty, graffiti-ridden former paper mill on the Connecticut River was again the subject of discussion at a recent Board of Trustees meeting. 

The board voted unanimously on Tuesday to start the process of officially declaring the property unsafe.

Rockingham and Bellows Falls Municipal Manager Shane O’Keefe said the board needs to ensure that the blighted building is “simply secured” at this time.

The building is “not going to fall down” but it is also not secure, according to Bellows Falls Trustee Jim McAuliffe.

“The issue is it’s unsafe in terms of people’s access to the building,” McAuliffe said.

The building under scrutiny — yet again — is the former Chemco Corp. riverfront property, also known as the Liberty Mill building.

In 2015 and early 2016, the site was temporarily considered for a controversial $23 million Liberty Mill Justice Center pre-trial detention facility proposed by Windham County Sheriff Keith Clark, and to house the Windham County Sheriff’s office. 

That proposal drew strong opposition from community members and local government and was withdrawn.   

O’Keefe said Tuesday that he has conducted research on the building and did not see any earlier declaration from the board of trustees  involving the property as an unsafe building. However, he said it would technically meet the definition of an unsafe building under the Village of Bellows Falls ordinance.  

The Board of Trustees cannot just declare it a hazardous site, O’Keefe said. That designation would require the input of a team that should include a fire marshal, an engineer, and a health officer.

“We simply need to get an inspection done,” he said.

O’Keefe said that the board of trustees, upon being notified about an unsafe building, should generally have an inspection done within 15 days. If the inspection finds there is merit to the complaint, the trustees would then designate a three-member committee to follow up.

The Bellows Falls board of trustees and the Rockingham Selectboard have discussed the building at 203 Paper Mill Road in the past several years as an unsafe, blighted structure.

In May 2016, at a trustees meeting, former Municipal Manager Willis “Chip” Stearns said he talked with building owner Steve McAllister, and had put him in touch with the Voices of Rockingham and Rockingham For Progress groups in regard to the building being unsafe.

McAllister, a Rockingham native who moved to Baltimore, at one time planned to build a luxury, eco-hotel in the building. The building, a masonry structure, had also once housed Thomas Turner Furniture Co. McAllister owns the building.

The board of trustees also discussed the same site in March 2016, when board members expressed concern that the building was unsafe and that at least the first floor should be secured, because people fish near that spot and could get hurt.

At the time, Stearns stated he would have the town’s attorney, Ray Massucco, send a letter to the property owner to secure the building.  

As of Tuesday afternoon, several floors of the building were empty and unsecured, with glassless windows and graffiti on interior columns and walls. Windows and entry ways were not boarded up and the interior was dark and littered with debris.

At a trustees meeting on April 10, Bellows Falls Trustee Deb Wright told the board that Police Chief Ron Lake indicated in the past he would not send officers into the building because of safety concerns.

Also at that meeting, O’Keefe said that delinquencies in taxes and utilities on the property would constitute an automatic lien on the property, according to the village attorney, and that the delinquent tax issues would become part of a tax sale process by the town of Rockingham.  

Wright made a motion at the  meeting Tuesday that the trustees “move forward to begin the process” of looking into the former Chemco site as an unsafe building. The board unanimously approved the motion.