West End Site Eyed for Redevelopment

Talk of possible development on a large West End site made me recall a previous plan for the block.

Planning Director William Nierstedt mentioned at the Oct 15 Planning Board meeting  that the South Second Street property between Grant and Plainfield avenues might be in line for development. The site is now city-owned, though Planning Director William Nierstedt said it is known as the "Oliver Brown" site.

When I first got to Plainfield in the 1980s, it was called the "Flexon" site. Brown owned it at the time of a massive fire that caused evacuation of neighboring streets. As I recall, he received a large insurance payment for the damage, but later lost the site.

Nierstedt did not give any details of plans for the site at the Planning Board meeting.

In 2005, plans for a new middle school on the site fell through, to the consternation of Mayor Albert T. McWilliams. The proposed school was to be the centerpiece of a broad rehabilitation effort in the West End.

Nierstedt mentioned the site at the Oct. 15 Planning Board meeting as being part of the "197 Properties" redevelopment plan. Many of the city-owned properties were small parcels that were sold off to owners of contiguous properties, but Nierstedt said the plan also included the so-called "Oliver Brown" site.

The 197 Properties plan goes back a decade or so, but the city recently held an auction to sell off some more of the lots. About 67 of the sites had been conveyed to a Westfield developer during the McWilliams administration, but not all were developed.

A list of more than a dozen redevelopment projects from the McWilliams era was largely ignored during the two terms of Mayor Sharon Robinson-Briggs, who introduced other redevelopment plans. In 2014, the administration of Mayor Adrian O. Mapp, through the Planning Division, decided to re-examine seven of the inactive plans.

--Bernice