This building stands next to where the old American Bosch factory on main street, near the Chicopee line, used to be. You might recall that that factory burned down quite spectacularly a couple years ago.
I'm not sure if this particular building was part of the factory, but most of it was recently knocked down, and the rest of it refurbished to be used for medical/health care businesses.
I thought it was interesting how they left the bottom portion of the old building standing, and turned it into a wall.
This section of Main St. is booming with health care and biomedical companies.
Going up Longhill St. in the south end of Springfield later in the day, my hand reflexively reached for the window handle to roll it up. I paused when I noticed there weren't any drug dealers or gangster type people hanging around.
In fact, there was almost noone hanging around.
I did see someone coming out of one of the units with a box-load of stuff and place it in a car parked on the grass near the door. Then I remembered reading a few weeks ago that everyone in the huge complex had been evicted. Yesterday was the last day for the remaining residents to move out.
The condo complex had been a "slow motion disaster" (as a Judge commented), for a long time now. It had long developed a reputation as one of the worst areas in the city. The problems here peaked this year with a drug deal gone bad resulting in a murder.
Some details of the complex's demise from the Urban Compass website: http://urbancompass.net/?p=564
and masslive: http://www.masslive.com/news/republican/index.ssf?/base/news-9/1190189865141720.xml&coll=1
Of course, every ending leads to a new beginning. I hope this marks the beginning of a turnaround for this section of the city.
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