"And if you belive that one, I've got four lovely acres right on the waterfront you'll just LOVE!!!!!

City Pier lands $2M
grant to clean up PCBs

Seen behind the unlocked gate of the city pier, Mayor Will Flanagan

 announces plans to clean up and revive the site. Then all those in

 attendance looked over a big map of the territory they stole from

Tom Koolan and decided to celebrate their ill gotten gains by pulling

a prank on Koolan and phoning in an order for 100 pizza's from

Pizza Hut for delivery to the Koolan household . All the pizzas

to be covered in "PCB" laden , two-headed anchovies.

***************
By Michael Holtzman
Herald News Staff Reporter
Posted Apr 15, 2010 @ 11:53 PM
***************
FALL RIVER — City officials, joining Lt. Gov. Tim Murray near the banks of the Taunton River adjacent to Point Gloria, offered arguably the best news Thursday in nearly 30 years for what’s known as City Pier.
Two million dollars is now available to clean up and prepare marina development of the 4½-acre site along the Heritage State Park boardwalk, Murray and Mayor Will Flanagan enthusiastically announced as the wind whipped off the river and most of the two dozen people on hand applauded.


“This will breathe life into our city’s waterfront,” Flanagan said of the long-neglected, one-time marina and working site.
“For far too long our waterfront has sat dormant,” he said, calling it the city’s “economic engine.”


“This is a great project for a number of different reasons,” Murray said shortly after the Seaport Advisory Council he chairs voted to expend the funds during a meeting at the city’s Advanced Technology Manufacturing Center.


The state grant funds would be made available to the city Redevelopment Authority, the property owner, after federal and state environmental officials approve a plan to clean up and cap the toxic concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls identified on site.
“The money would be available in fiscal year 2012, in July 2011,” said Kenneth Fiola, Fall River Office of Economic Development executive vice president and the Redevelopment Authority’s staff person.
Fiola expected the cleanup and design plan to be prepared by June of next year. The Redevelopment Authority contracted the Beta Group Inc., Norwood, to do that work through a $175,000 state grant, he said.
Fiola said the PCBs were detected about three or four years ago after the mile-long boardwalk was built between Heritage State Park and the Point Gloria riverfront condominiums.

Murray said funding a contamination cleanup is consistent with brownfield remediation support at strategic urban centers, expanding jobs and tax bases in the SouthCoast among other sectors the administration of Gov. Deval Patrick has targeted since taking office.
The Seaport Advisory Council represents Fall River, New Bedford, Boston, Salem and Gloucester.

Two years ago, early in the term of former Mayor Robert Correia, he identified the need to find a funding source to clear the PCBs, an invisible, organic compound and known carcinogen, to tap this waterfront development and revamping of adjacent Route 79.


That March 2008 Herald News story was the first time officials publicly identified the presence of PCBs.

Fiola estimated, through environmental testing at that time, the cost as $1 million to $3.5 million to remove or cap PCBs with concentrations as high as 560 parts per million when their cleanup goal was two parts per million.


He said yesterday the $2 million grant should handle the cleanup and, in most cases, capping of the contaminants, design and permitting of the site for development.
It would include leveling the top of the seawall to accommodate the envisioned public marina, Fiola said.
“You will no longer see this ugly fence,” he told the audience, a reference to the expanse of locked chain-link barring the public for years.

More than 25 years ago, when there was a marina of more than 100 boat slips and the Dockside Lounge was a well-known bar and grill, “the amount of PCB concentration nobody knew about. The source is still unclear,” Fiola told Flanagan after the brief media announcement.

Fiola told the gathering they envisioned, in a rough plan he displayed by the Beta Group, 110 boat slips and transient slips that would part of a public marina that would be privately developed.


Among those with likely the longest-term interest in what was presented yesterday was lifelong mariner Tom Koolan, a civil engineer.

From 1974 until “Oct. 31, 1982,” he said, Koolan and his partner Harry Deiss owned the marina and lounge.
That was until the Redevelopment Authority took the property by eminent domain. Six years later, in 1988, The RA signed a land disposition agreement for a group headed by city businessman James Karam, who developed Point Gloria, to build a $25 million marina, health club and high-rise apartments at city pier.


It never happened.
Koolan, standing apart from the crowd, said of the envisioned plan, “That was my marina. It changed maybe the position of a couple of docks, but that was my marina.


“The amount of money that could have flowed through my hands up to the present days was in the millions,” he said, showing mixed response to the announcement.


The city ultimately paid the partners just under $300,000 after a 1986 court judgment.


Yesterday, Flanagan, Fiola and Murray also spoke about the prospect for nearby rail transportation the Patrick administration has prioritized, and the goal of lowering and removing Route 79 for wider waterfront access.
Fiola reiterated how that could add eight to 10 more acres to the 4½ already secured. Without the priorities of Murray and Flanagan, he said, “This project would not have occurred.”


At one time, $8.5 million in federal funds was available for development of a Route 79/Davol Street waterfront boulevard. Under the Romney administration, about half of it was returned to the federal government.


The state released $250,000 for an initial feasibility study on whether the Route 79 ramps could be removed.


About $4 million remains committed for this project, and in October former Mayor Correia said he remained hopeful the state would release $750,000 for design of how such a project would be done.


Flanagan said yesterday the city envisions a hotel, restaurants, shops, and housing along that new boulevard. Last week he met with state Department of Transportation officials about the funding.
“It’s a work in progress,” he said.
E-mail Michael Holtzman at mholtzman@heraldnews.com.

First, I want to thank my old friends "Charlotte" and "Wigberto",  in all of his unsavory forms of nom de guerre, for giving me the inspiration for looking into this wonderful news. And I must also say I approached this endeavor with mixed feelings. You see, some of the principals in this tawdry tale are the Karams, true Fall River icons, who believe charity begins at home and pretty much never leaves the front yard. At the same time, they are the people I have to believe are the architects of the best bit of "braodcast" news around these parts since Kerry Rodrigues was bum rushed in her workplace by the all world punk formally known as "The Hurricane" and then filed suit against him. The Karmas canned the Hurricane. So they get one big point for ridding the Fall River cultural lexicon of it's most dreaded syllables. And no, I don't mean "Club Flaun-eh" (To all you life long Fall River natives, just say Club Flaunt quickly with your eyes closed and  see what I mean!).

But I digress - it was good for me, was it good for you?  I cannot see how all this wheeling and dealing and, most critically, STEALING, adds up to anything less than a scheme from the Soprano's. Let's see, first the Karams probably see the possibilities for real estate development of the waterfront when it was nothing more than an extended rat catching opportunity. That's because no one in their right mind would ever interpret the Painted Pony Emporium as something to build a City's real estate revival around, that would have been , excuse the expression, FALL RIVER STUPID . Again, because of some inside baseball they got the word fed and state monies were available for just such a thing. So, I imagine, they pulled some strings at City Hall with officials and politicians they financially backed and supported for the eminent domain action, swindling Mr. Tom Koolan and his partner, when, and again I am just thinking out loud here,  they refused to sell to the Karams at a price the Karams thought was reasonable. (Who ever heard of $10 bucks an acre and all the crushed up mollusk shells they could handle unreasonable?)

Well, along comes Republican Governator Der Mittser Romney into the picture, and to paraphrase the lyrics sung by Richard Harris in the song MacArthur Park, "Der Mittser left the waterfront development cake out in the rain" and the Karams just couldn't find the money recipe again!

Then we have the "Pipe Dream on 79", where they, OHMYGAWDDDD" find there are PCB's contaminating these four, nasty, rat infested waterfront acres. I mean, the day they caught that woeful two headed fish across the river on the Somerset side that should have told them there was still a BIG problem! "PCB's...howdidthathappen?" Please, spare me the  shock and awe!

Now we have a new  Mayor with serious juice with the Governor and Lt. Governor, gladly accepting grants for this cleanup gig. I just don't think anything will ever get done. The time frame is far too long from design to work to finish. It looks like more of a publicity event to support Mayor Flanagan and the Democratic Governor's ticket for reelection than it does as a real, solid money making venture....unless....IT'S A POTENTIAL SITE FOR ONE OF THE NEW CASINO'S!!!  I would not bet against that folks....these guys know what's likely to happen a year or two before the rest of us peons find out! It's also why the Karams would be so deeply involved regardless of who they backed or who they gave campaign contributions.

The disgusting part of this is how these guys the Karams crawled all over Mr. Koolan and his partner to steal his property, all neat and legally, of course, and left him with a paltry sum of $300,000 for land that could eventually be worth untold tens of millions when all is said and done. It's shameful, this heist on the high seas, this purloining on PCB Place. It stinks worse than the natural "Oduere" which rises from this chemical stuffed seagull guano sanctuary. The only two people I feel bad for in this contrived clipping is Mr. Koolan and the taxpayers, for having to pay for some business entity's inability to flush their own toilet adequately. WE pay for the cleanup, and these thieves the Karams claim the clean land for their own. I'd rather see it go to some crooked nosed gambling interests from Federal Hill than the Lebanese Connection. At least the Federal Hill boys don't claim to be anything other than what they are.

Somebody better tell Fiola he shouldn't try to cash that check....it's not real Ken.....what a shame. To know you are taking the place of stationary equipment you forgot to bring with you is just embarrassing. Just call him the "Weasel Easle" from now on.