NORTHAMPTON — The City Council on Thursday approved the request for proposals for the former Registry of Deeds property at 33 King St., clearing the way for interested buyers to begin submitting bids for the central downtown property.

The property, a 1.46-acre parcel next to the Calvin Theater and across from Hotel Northampton, has been vacant since 2019 and recently had ownership transferred from the state to the city. The RFP for the property calls for the current building on the property to be torn down and replaced with a newer multistory building. The minimum bid is set at $2.5 million, and the deadline for proposals is currently set for Nov. 30.

The council unanimously approved the RFP after receiving a positive recommendation from a joint committee hearing held on Wednesday by the Committee on Finance and the Committee on Community Resources. The two committees made a positive recommendation after suggesting several clarifications to the RFP, including housing criteria.

The RFP lists several criteria that bids will be graded on to determine their viability for Northampton, such as bids demonstrating a financial benefit to the city greater than $4 million. One such criteria is for housing, a 60-40 split of market rate housing and affordable housing given the greatest consideration, with fewer points given to housing ratios with lower percentages of market rate housing.

Ward 5 councilor Alex Jarrett, a member of the community resources committee, said there needed to be additional clarity in the housing criteria to ensure that a housing bid should include at least some affordable housing.

“There is a need for a minimum,” he said. “If we’re going to have mixed-income housing, since that’s the name of the criteria, what would be the minimum affordable or attainable housing and thus the maximum market rate?”

Jarrett’s sentiments were shared by Ward 1 councilor and finance committee member Stan Moulton.

“We don’t want 100% market rate housing,” he said. “Let’s eliminate the ambiguity so it’s clear to all the possible bidders on what the points system is based on.”

Several members of the public also weighed in during the joint committee meeting. Sam Scoppettone, a Northampton resident who works in real estate development, questioned whether the city should lower, or perhaps even do away entirely with, the minimum bid for the property.

“If you set a really high minimum bid, there’s a danger that people won’t respond to this RFP, and then we’ll be back at square one again,” Scoppettone said. “I don’t want to see the building continue to sit vacant and the property continue to be an eyesore on downtown.”

Councilor Marissa Elkins, who serves on the community resources committee, pushed back against ideas of lowering the minimum bid.

“The way we find out what the market will bear is by putting it on the market,” she said. “If we don’t get the bids, then we don’t and we retool and that’s our signal that we’ve overshot.”

Proceeds from any future sale of the property would be split evenly between the state and the city of Northampton. Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra told committee members on Wednesday that she had several ideas of what to do with the expected influx of cash.

“There are certainly some projects that we are looking for funding, for example at the high school for the redesign we’re doing there for safety,” Sciarra said. “We are also looking at Picture Main Street, as we start to develop the plans around mitigation for the construction period. We would like to have some pot of money to work on ways that the community can work together to support our businesses downtown during that time.”

Alexander MacDougall can be reached at amacdougall@gazettenet.com.

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