Six potential developers tour Worcester courthouse
Developers are looking at the vacant Worcester County Courthouse as a sale process may be starting up again.
Potential developers of the vacant Worcester County Courthouse are touring the building, a few months after a sale of the building fell through.
A New Hampshire firm, Brady Sullivan Properties, bought the property from the city in 2015 for $1.2 million, but the buyer backed out of the deal last December. The company had planned to convert the property into 115 market-rate apartments and 3,000 square feet of retail space.
The city kept a $120,000 deposit from that failed deal.
Now, a sale process is starting up again. The city hosted about 20 people from six different firms last week and has another tour planned for Thursday, said John Hill, a spokesman for the city.
Companies with interest in the building have until March 1 to submit a letter demonstrating they may want to build there. A more formal process, known as a request for proposals, could follow in the next several months, Hill said Monday, but there is no timeline for when that might take place.
The Worcester County Courthouse, at Main and Highland streets, has been vacant for nearly a decade after its replacement opened farther south down Main Street. The city bought the property from the state for $1 in 2014, and $3 million was spent on asbestos and other environmental cleanup on the building, in order to facilitate a new use there.
The Greek Revival courthouse, which was built in 1843, with a major addition in 1954, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
As much as other areas around downtown have boomed with redevelopment -- in particular CitySquare and the Canal District -- the Lincoln Square area has lagged. In addition to the County Courthouse, the city-owned Worcester Memorial Auditorium is also still sitting empty.
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