Manchester house price: $10,718, not including moving costs

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November 12, 2009

That was only bid for Pine Street structure

By Jonathan Phelps The Gloucester Daily Times Thu Nov 12, 2009, 10:40 PM EST

MANCHESTER — A house for $10,718? A garage for $1?

Those were the winning — and only — bids opened yesterday from buyers willing to acquire and remove the town-owned houses and related buildings sitting on contaminated Pine Street land.

The $10,000 bid was for the large yellow house located at 156 Pine St.; the $1 bid was for the garage — only — at the 158 Pine St. site next door. The bids were opened and read aloud yesterday morning by Town Administrator Wayne Melville in the selectmen's room at Town Hall.

The $10,718 bid for the house at 156 Pine St. came from CN Building Movers in Dracut, which took control of the house that still sits on property the town purchased in July for $858,000 from David and Julie Gesner.

Melville said the company has three potential locations they can buy to move the house to in Manchester all within .2 miles from its current location; any and all bids yesterday were for the houses and structures only, with the requirement that the new owner be responsible for moving the buildings off the tainted properties. The town retains ownership of the land.

In the case of CN Building Movers, the company will not make a decision on specifically where it will purchase for the house until the town's selectmen approve the bid. The bids were received pending approval from the town's selectmen, who will meet and consider the acquisitions at their next meeting Monday at 6:30 p.m. John Belanger, a representative of CN Building Movers, would not comment on the sale until the bid was approved.

The bid for the garage at 158 Pine St. at $1 — the cost of a McDouble cheeseburger at McDonald's — came from David Doucette, who works for the town's Department of Public Works. There were no bids for the houses at 158 and 160 Pine St.

"It is not what we are getting paid," Melville said. "It is about saving the (town the) cost of having to tear it down."

The town had purchased 156, 158 and 160 Pine St. as part of a state-mandated cleanup of land that once served as a burn dump in the 1950s. Voters at Town Meeting in May approved two referendum questions allowing the town to take control of the three properties for a cost of up to $2.4 million because of the high levels of lead, arsenic, chromium and cadmium found in the soil caused by the former dump.

In late October, the houses were put up for bid to try to avoid the cost of tearing them down — but with the caveat that the buyers would have to move the structures to a new location within 45 days of purchase at their own expense.

"I'm surprised there wasn't more than one bid, but I wasn't expecting a large number," Melville said yesterday, adding there were about three interested parties for the house.

Town officials have said the $2.4 million to buy the properties and the additional money that will be spent to clean them is far less than what would be needed if the town didn't own the land. Melville had told the Times it could have cost the town upward of $10 million if the state Department of Environmental Protection directed the cleanup.

The town will have to clear all the properties before they can clean the contaminated land, but there are no set plans at this point, Melville said.

Jonathan Phelps can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3447, or via e-mail at gt_reporter@gloucestertimes.com.