Massachusetts Smart Growth News Articles -
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Published on: 6/28/2005
Last Visited: 10/3/2009
A participant in a media conference call before the Massachusetts Municipal Association's 27th Annual Meeting and Trade Show, January 13-14 in Boston, reports Fitchburg Sentinel & Enterprise writer Aaron Wasserman, the attorney pointed out that post-industrial centers such as Fitchburg can greatly benefit from their defunct old mills, once so important for the local economy.
''If you can get into these inner cores and take these buildings that are well-preserved, gut it and then market it as an 'ambiance' that you can't find in new construction, there is a market and it will go forward,'' he said, convinced that ever-steeper material costs will make older structures financially attractive to more and more builders.
As municipalities work to reinvent themselves, they also should offer developers and residents tax breaks to help them return downtown, he added, citing 20-year property-tax-reduction programs in Pawtucket, Rhode Island as a successful revitalization tool. -- Sentinel & Enterprise 1/13/2006