Why is Lebanon’s Spencer Street project a good deal now?
Your recent front page article on the Spencer Street housing project (“Housing project moves forward: Downtown effort underway after years of false starts,” Aug. 17) raises many questions.
According to the article, this parcel is currently assessed at $853,000, but is being sold to Hollis, N.H., developer Jake Tamposi and his brother Joe for $400,000. That means the Tamposi brothers are buying it for less than half it’s value. The article also states that the city council rejected a bid in 2017 of $400,000 by longtime Lebanon developer Mike Davidson, calling the bid “too low.”
Why, a decade later, after Lebanon property valuations have more than doubled, is it now a good deal?
Davidson, according to the article, had planned to build 100 to 200 residential units, plus 20,000 square feet of commercial and office space. The Tamposi brothers said they will build 80 units — a much smaller number — and no commercial or office space. Why is this project, which could have been built, and utilized for nearly a decade, now being labeled “full speed ahead” for the Tamposi brothers?
Lastly, why would Lebanon favor the Tamposi family, all of them millionaires many times over, with developments all around southern New Hampshire, as well as Florida and elsewhere, over Davidson, a Dartmouth College graduate, local property owner and developer of many excellent local housing projects in White River Junction, as well as the renovated Lebanon Junior High School, located only hundreds of yards from the Spencer Street site?
I realize we cannot now turn the clock back a decade, but would someone please explain?