,Recorder Staff, Tuesday, March 22, 2016 TURNERS FALLS — A blighted building, a relic from the town’s paper mill heyday, might soon become condominiums with help from a new $2.24 million private redevelopment proposal.
The Strathmore Paper Mill is a complex on the Power Canal with some shattered and boarded-up windows. Despite the condition of the buildings, town officials are pushing to get them back on the tax rolls. The Board of Selectmen accepted a developer’s proposal on Monday night to rehabilitate one of the 10 vacant buildings.
The brick seven-story building slated for rehab is just 32,280 square feet of the roughly 270,000-square-foot complex on the island between the Power Canal and the Connecticut River, but town officials hope this could create a catalyst for other investors to see the potential in the remaining mill buildings, which have been vacant for more than 10 years.