'Demolition is an option' after latest deal fails to save old Fall River police station

FALL RIVER — It’s a scene played out before, and it's happened again: another attempt to sell off and redevelop the old Bedford Street police station has failed, with the more than 100-year-old contaminated and structurally unsound building back in the city's hands.

But it may have been the building's last chance, since it is so decrepit it likely cannot be saved.

Wethersfield LLC of Chelsea purchased the Bedford Street property for $10,000 in January 2021 with the hopes of developing it into 36 market-rate housing units.

The company had a special permit for parking from the Fall River Zoning Board of Appeals last July to allow the project to bypass parking requirements, and had plan approval and permits to start construction. Wethersfield had even performed some remediation at the contaminated property.

But the project took a turn in August when the city’s head of building inspection, Glenn Hathaway, walked through a portion of the structure and ordered work halted because of structural concerns, then requested a survey of the building by a structural engineer.

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Police station developer had to ‘fish or cut bait’

Wethersfield has dropped plans to redevelop the property.

“That’s what led to the decision,” said city real estate attorney Matthew Thomas. “There were issues they were going to have to get through before they could even decide what they had to do. It was time to either fish or cut bait.”

“It’s unfortunate that a lot of time has gone by and there aren’t a lot of options,” said Thomas. “In this particular project, I think there were too many variables against it because of the passage of time.”

From Thomas’s observations, the developers “actually tried.”

As part of the sale, Wethersfield and the city had agreed to certain benchmarks for the redevelopment project. Due to COVID and the economic fallout from the pandemic, those deadlines had been extended.

'Demolition is an option' for contaminated police station

That “passage of time” dates back to the era of former Mayor Edward Lambert. Six mayors have attempted to repurpose the four-story building, which stands inches from the curb at Bedford and High streets and has for years been surrounded by a ring of metal fencing to protect any passersby. It has been vacant since 1997 when the Fall River Police Department moved to its new headquarters on Pleasant Street.

The old station is highly contaminated with mold, asbestos and fuel oil from its auto repair facility in the building and underground. The building also once housed an indoor shooting range.

“Demolition is an option,” said Mayor Paul Coogan, the latest mayor to put the sale and redevelopment out to bid soon after taking office. “I’m not going to put people at risk.”

Coogan said the administration hasn’t figured out who would be responsible for a demolition job.

“We’re not sure who is going to pay for it yet, but it's going to be taken care of,” said Coogan.

Bank Street Armory is also in danger of decay

The news that the police station likely can’t be saved comes just days before the Coogan administration is resubmitting a proposed sale and redevelopment of another historical city-owned building in danger of decay: the Bank Street Armory.

The City Council, which is empowered to sell city-owned property, recently rejected a plan to sell the armory to local developer Alan Macomber for redevelopment into market-rate housing.

The armory was used by the city recreation department until 2015 when the building inspector ordered it shut down due to structural concerns. It is used for storage of city property, but otherwise has remained empty. The Community Preservation Committee has spent a few hundred thousand dollars on the property for much-needed repairs.

Coogan is asking the City Council to reconsider at their meeting on Tuesday.

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A decade and a half of failed sales attempts

The city's repeated attempts to unload the police station are a comedy of errors dating to 2007.

That’s when the Committee on Real Estate, under then-Chairman Leo Pelletier, pulled the expected sale from local developer Anthony Cordeiro. The council instead sold it to real estate developer John Pavao for $160,000.

Pavao tried to “flip” the police station a month after the purchase for $695,000, then became involved in an inside deal that enabled Pavao’s JPS Investments Group Inc. of Ocoee, Florida, to transfer the property to Superior International Investments Corp., headed by Pedro “Pete” Benevides, a former Fall River resident.

Benevides sold the building in June 2008 for $1.28 million to Winter Garden, Florida-based Casper Holdings LLC, owned by Steve Brueggeman, who in 2012 gave up the building to the city for back taxes.

Then former mayor Jasiel Correia II tried his hand at drawing interest in the property and searched for a new owner willing to redevelop the station into a boutique hotel, a plan that never materialized.

Pelletier, who was absent from the recent vote on the police station due to health issues, is the strongest proponent for the sale of the armory, citing the history of the Bedford Street police station in a letter to his colleagues.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Demolition likely for old Fall River police station; too unsafe to fix