Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: And we're pleased to say good morning and welcome to Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch for weekly City hall update. Mayor, how are you this morning?
[00:00:07] Speaker B: I'm doing well, Joe. Beautiful morning.
[00:00:09] Speaker A: It is indeed.
[00:00:10] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: Really looking forward to some outdoor festivities for the coming months. America250 events that are starting to gear up the sail Boston calendar was released this morning and I understand maybe a tall ship even coming to Quincy this year.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Yes. Not one of the largest ones because we have the draft issue at the marina, but a decent sized one. Yes. Neat. Looking forward to that.
[00:00:35] Speaker A: Indeed. Yes. The maritime festival I know is coming back. That was a huge hit last year.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: It was a big hit. It's a great spot in our city. And you know, I predicted it wouldn't be such a hit. Honestly, I thought a lot more people went away but a lot more people hang around than I expected. So it was, families enjoyed it and it was a nice restaurant. Said well it was a great weekend. Hopefully we'll have weather like we did last year.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Yes, that would be lovely for sure. But either way it's a go.
Can we talk a little bit about this? There's I guess an opportunity for Quincy folks to volunteer to be welcome ambassadors or historic tour guides. So just regular folks who want to maybe learn a little bit more about the city and then to share with others.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: Yes, I think that's the Bob Damon and Dagny operation.
We do have folks that man the welcome center.
But there are places and times where we could use volunteers to help us show people around.
We have a lot to show in this city. As you know Joe, the history here is pretty amazing. Especially when you throw the 250 on top of all started here. When you look back at it, Quincy, Boston, Braintree at the time Lexington, Concord, I mean really when you look at all began in Massachusetts and then went from there. Of course we had two giants at the Continental Congress and Hancock and Adams. So yeah, good stuff. So we're looking for folks to help us out.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it's you'll be trained, it's all free. You'll get a certificate and then you can be a, a welcome ambassador for the city.
[00:02:17] Speaker B: Sounds good.
[00:02:18] Speaker A: Sign up a more a more recent giant would be tomorrow on on board the USS Salem. It's the 77th birthday for the Quincy built heavy cruiser at the Quincy shipyard tomorrow from 3:30 to 6:30 and Chris Chowder Hill is the guest speaker.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: It's a very successful Navy captain. He was I think a 97 grad North Lindsay High School.
We had him as a speaker a few years ago at Veterans Day.
And he was one of the best speakers I'd ever heard at a Veterans Day event. He was phenomenal.
He's been very accomplished. I think what they said is he's the only captain to run two aircraft carriers during wartime since World War II.
I think I have that right. I forget the names of them. I think one of them was the Eisenhower. But he's quite a guy and he certainly has quite a record in the United States Navy. And it'd be nice to honor him as he comes home.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Yes. This is, let's see tomorrow on the fan tale of the Salem, which in itself is quite a historic attraction too.
This is a free complimentary admission, especially for veterans and veteran groups and their guests as well. Folks should stop by and check that out. Yeah, absolutely.
Mayor, as you know, we're in the midst of budget hearings now before the city council after your presentation last week. First hearing held last night at City hall and the issue of purchasing Eastern Nazarene College was discussed a little bit. Some concerns about cost of that and the future plans for that, some suggesting maybe selling off some other city land to pay for that. How would you feel about that?
[00:04:02] Speaker B: Well, I'm not privy to the specifics of last night, Joe, but we, when we presented the thought of buying it, we, you know, not every I will be dotted t will be crossed to figure out the entire apostle. But we did mention it right up front. There were a number of, you know, single family, two family homes that are on the site, as well as some house lots that we could sell off that probably would get to half the cost of it.
And then we looked at other possibilities, but we won't have everything nailed down before the sale. Quite frankly, I appreciate where the city council is coming from. Certainly do.
Most of our purchases, well, many of our purchases have either been open space or downtown related.
You know, we've had some off ones like the Monroe Building, which was federal money, and the Town River Marina, which was federal money, which, which is, I would also argue, an open space, A waterfront piece of property that is very valuable would have been a condominium building there and we wouldn't have access to the Tom river publicly. So there's a lot of reasons each of the parcels were purchased. We expect to put out an RFP pretty soon for the Messina lot, which is at the corner of Hancock and Hanon, and recoup some spurious money on that.
We bought for parking because we took the Hancock parking area away and while the garage was being built, the pressure was on for parking that was purchased for the parking lot with the understanding someday something would be built on it. A lot of planning goes into these things, and you got a lot of pieces on the board. You got to move them around.
But at the end of the day, I think it would be a huge mistake, the city of Quincy not to purchase ancient because we don't know who's behind us on the purchase. And some entities that could buy that, Joe, quite frankly, they would fall into the Doberman and the neighborhood would have no control at all.
[00:05:59] Speaker A: Yeah, I know you mentioned that before.
Is the deadline still June 15, or can that be extended?
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Well, if it's extended, it'll cost the city more money encountered on the market for a while. They want to.
They want to sell, pay off the debt on that property and move on. So I think we have to the end of June. But if it goes beyond that, it'll cost substantial money to the city, and I'm not so sure I want to get on that road.
[00:06:29] Speaker A: Would part of the acreage be preserved as open space?
[00:06:32] Speaker B: Mayor yes, in fact, there'd be some parts of the.
Well, if you look at the map, Joe, and then you look at the floodplain map, you know, there's some questions around that area. Well, it's not questions. There's issues around that area regarding flooding. So we would take some pockets of that property. For example, the tennis courts, which are in pretty bad shape. It's been used more for parking. That section, which would be kind of the southeast corner of the site, I would look at putting some replicating some wetlands in that area to hold water so the neighborhood around doesn't get flooded. If you're going to build on that, you're only going to add to the problem of flooding in that neighborhood. So that's one example of open space, you know, doing the right thing for the flooding issue in the neighborhood.
Very good.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: As you might be aware, Mayor, there's a plan to kind of use the old Wollaston Theater site for a beer garden this year. And it got me thinking about the Wollaston Urban Redevelopment District, and if there's any update on that.
[00:07:40] Speaker B: Yeah, we're almost there. We have a similar challenge in Wobbiston with the floodplain issue. And as you know, there's a lot of eyes on climate change and what's going on.
And you've got a bowl down there behind the cvs, which fills up pretty quickly in these big rain events that we get. So we got some engineering Solutions, but they've got to coincide with some of the development. So it could be a shared in the cost of fixing that. So you know, the theater site would be away from that. But you know the, the urdp, the state wants us to get more specific on addressing that issue before we get the final approval on the URDP for the Wallace and Business District. But I think we're very close so looking forward to that.
[00:08:24] Speaker A: Very good. And also any update on the Wallace, the Rather Quincy Center MBTA station redevelopment?
[00:08:33] Speaker B: There's been a couple of meetings. I expect general manager is going to be coming out with his team in the very near future. We talked on last week about that to go over every aspect of it from the infrastructure of the station to the egress to the station, the electrical needs and upgrades and all the ADA needs that's going to be needed and upgrading the station as well. So we'll be going over that like every aspect of it on their visit so we can get the design finished up and move on.
[00:09:05] Speaker A: Okay. And are you still hoping that the team may kind of transfer the site of the current maintenance facility on Hancock street to the city?
[00:09:14] Speaker B: Yeah, that's the, that's the goal. We have a, we have an informal agreement on that.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:19] Speaker B: And this, the city and state would together apply for some other grants to help us with the, the state would take down the building then we've got some challenges with the contaminants on the site. I mean it's been a garage going back to I think 1920 or something. So we can be assured that there's some issues in the ground there.
I don't think they paid too much attention many years ago. Many of them just dumped oil into the ground thinking that was okay.
So yeah, we got an informal agreement. We've got to formalize it. But at this point with all that's going on in the world, I think that we would use it for parking right now for the stadium, get the building down, do what we need to do on the contaminant. In fact, if we just pave it, there's probably less of issues of the contaminant issue on the soil. So that's the goal right now.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: Finally, Mayor, a very nice service for Mayor James Sheets back on Saturday in the Richardson Room.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: It was a nice hour, little more than an hour I guess where about 150 people because that is a rather stately room.
Jim Sheets loved the library and he led the effort for the addition which also houses qatv.
[00:10:36] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:10:37] Speaker B: And of course he left his mark in many ways, whether it was the new Clifford Marshall delicieser or additions to new schools. I mean, there's a number of areas he made great improvements on. And you know, he passed away. He was 90 years old. He was about 25 years out of office.
A lot of time has passed, so sometimes people forget. But there were a number of people there Saturday, as I said, about 150 people there because they wanted to be there.
You know, I described Jim, if you pick one word would be decent. He was a real decent human being who did his best for the city and left a great legacy in his family. Each of the kids spoke and did a phenomenal job. So I was glad to be part of those days. I learned a lot under his mentorship and I'll always be grateful for that.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: Very nice. Folks will be able to watch that service here on QATV as well coming up in the near future too.
[00:11:34] Speaker B: Great. Excellent.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: And this Saturday it is another free concert on the Hancock Adams Common.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: Imagine that.
John and the team do great work. I know these concerts are well received.
Obviously a beautiful venue. That park is gorgeous.
So we look forward to another one coming up.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: Absolutely. Folks should check out discoverquinsy.com There's a full calendar of events and they're all free, which is very nice.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: Very nice.
[00:12:04] Speaker A: Good to talk to you, Mayor. Appreciate your time.
[00:12:07] Speaker B: Always a pleasure, Joe. Have a great day.
[00:12:09] Speaker A: Thank you. You too.
[00:12:10] Speaker B: Bye. By.
