The first redevelopment stops of a plan that will include 546 housing complexes in a former commercial area that has undergone extensive cleaning in recent years will be presented to the Nashua Planning Council on Feb. 15.
The Mohawk Tannery/Fimbel Door redevelopment assignment through Blaylock Holdings LLC includes 546 apartments and condominiums, as well as a green and recreational area for citizens that includes a jetty for canoes and kayaks. A conceptual plan from last year also shows a pedestrian bridge across the Nashua River to Mine Falls Park.
The Planning Committee will present 3 subdivision programs for the site at the February 15 meeting. The pieces were removed from the Feb. 1 agenda.
The redevelopment portion of the assignment begins as a $14. 3 million cleanup of the tannery site is underway. The cleanup will need to be approved through the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. before the structure can begin.
The 40 acres are bordered by the Veterans Memorial Parkway, the Nashua River, and the Fairmount Heights neighborhood. It’s across the river from Mine Falls Park. The current owners of the homes affected by the progression are the city of Nashua, Fimbel Door Corp. , Chester Realty Trust, J. K. S. Realty LLC and L. J. J. Real Estate LLC. Blaylock Holdings is the developer.
The development area includes the 30.54-acre former Mohawk Tannery Site, which is owned by Chester Realty Trust; the 4.98-acre Fimbel Door Corp. site and the 4.4-acre Row parcel between Fimbel Door and the parkway.
The nine buildings proposed for progression would have space for 230 apartments in 4 4-story buildings adjacent to Veterans Memorial Parkway and 316 condominiums in five 4- and five-story buildings in the center of the site, according to a concept plan presented to citizens last March. . .
Phase I of construction, which begins with plat board approval, would last through early 2026. By the end of 2025, there would be 57 completed apartments and 63 completed condominium complexes on the site. There would be 172 apartments through the end of 2026 and 230 total through the end of 2027. The condominium progression would progress more slowly, with about 60 to 70 apartments per year until all 316 are completed in 2030, according to the conceptual plan.
Blaylock will donate $2. 3 million to the Nashua Affordable Housing Trust Fund and 20 percent of the apartments will be affordable housing, according to the concept plan.
Estimated annual taxes on assets would be about $1. 9 million in 2029, the first year of full construction, through the 2023 filing.
Some 10 acres along the river will be given to the city for new green space. The pedestrian bridge, which Mayor Jim Donchess refers to as a “future dream” in an August online post, would be financed by a $3 million bond issue.
The Planning Committee will conduct 3 subdivision programs for the site, including:
EPA, Blaylock, city partnered on cleanup
Mohawk Tannery occupied the 30. 58 acres on the banks of the Nashua River from 1924 to 1984, generating tanned hides for leather. The owners did not care about the poisonous nature of the waste they silently dumped into the lagoons right next to the river, and into the river itself. In the 40 years since its closure, it has remained a dangerous, empty, fenced-off oasis in downtown Nashua while the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency worked to cover it up. It has become the EPA’s Granite State Leathers. SuperfundArray
The EPA announced an agreement in February 2021 with Blaylock Holdings to close and expand the site after more than two years of public hearings and negotiations. The $14. 3 million closing was funded through $6 million from the EPA, a $3 million loan from the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority, a $2 million loan from the City of Nashua funded through BFA, and $3. 3 million in personal capital raised through Blaylock.
At the time the cleanup was announced, the EPA called it a “unique” cost-sharing arrangement that will save $8 million in “taxpayer’s money,” as compared to EPA performing the cleanup by itself. The cleanup was designed to address hazardous substances in soil and sludge, as well as waste originating from the site and “once completed, will eliminate the threat posed to human health and the environment.”
The 4. 98-acre Fimbel Door assets are also environmentally sensitive and will also be secured as part of the redevelopment project.
The Mohawk tannery dumped its waste into lagoons a few meters from the Nashua River, as well as into a series of pits and drainage basins in and around the tannery’s buildings, the EPA said.
“The sludge and soils in those spaces are infected with heavy metals, semi-volatile biological compounds, and/or dioxins,” the EPA said. The company also decided that there was asbestos in the soil.
“These contaminants are presently exposed in the open lagoon and surficial soils in various locations at the site,” the agency’s assessment of the site before the current cleanup said. “Most of the waste lies in the northern parcel in the former lagoons adjacent to the Nashua River.”
A March 2023 PowerPoint presented at a network assembly on the task includes a 1976 excerpt from the Nashua Telegraph detailing Mohawk’s struggles to find an environmentally friendly way to dispose of poison sludge produced at the plant.
Eight years later, in May 1984, after lawsuits filed through citizens and organizations, the EPA filed a lawsuit against the tannery’s owners. The tannery closed its doors and the 30 acres along the river were left as an empty and poisonous place.
The EPA from 2000-2002 cleaned up asbestos and other hazardous material at the site, and continued to work with the owners on keeping the hazardous waste there from becoming more of a problem.
The site was nominated for inclusion on the National Priorities List in 2000 because the tannery had discharged tea water containing hazardous ingredients such as chromium, zinc, and phenol directly into the Nashua River and disposed of sludge containing hazardous ingredients such as chromium, pentachlorophenol, phenol, and 2,4,6-trichlorophenol in unlined disposal spaces of the site.
The site was never added to the list, at the city’s request, because of its prospect as a progression site, according to the EPA’s site history. The logic is probably that a developer would take on some of the emergent cleanup charge. In 2018, nearly 20 years after its proposal was listed, but not included, Blaylock, the city and the EPA began discussing the progression project, and the agreement was announced in December 2021.
Before the agreement was reached, citizens attending public comment sessions were involved that the proposed mitigation procedures would not be sufficient and that the site would not be for citizens. The EPA said at the time that the overall removal of all pollutants would cost more than $32 million.
Blaylock’s cleanup includes excavating hazardous waste from the tannery, fabrics from landfills, and fabrics containing asbestos; Waste disposal in a newly built waste containment mobile and general recovery of the property. The containment mobile will use “the most complex fabrics and technology, adding a cap and vertical barrier designed to meet EPA’s needs under Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Responsibility. “Act, the National Petroleum and Hazardous Substances Pollution (NCP) Contingency Plan, and the overall cleanup plan,” the EPA said.
Over the decades the site has been vacant, despite fencing, it’s been vandalized, trespassed on and burned. The building at the site wasn’t razed until 2012, after the final of several arson fires.
“This cleanup and redevelopment will reduce risks to human health and the environment and provide significant economic opportunities, much-needed residential housing, and return abandoned assets to productive use,” the EPA said in a fact sheet about the site’s cleanup history.
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