This is the second of two columns on the latest developments on the removal of the UMass Dartmouth College of Visual and Performing Arts from New Bedford.
As 2023 wound down toward its end, a valve on a heat pipe burst at the Star Store, causing tiles to fall from a ceiling. A restoration company had to pump out resulting water that poured onto the first floor and did damage to the basement.
A rep for building owner Paul Downey said there was about $3,000 worth of damage in the structure, agreeing with a spokesman for the city of New Bedford who described the destruction as “very minor.” A passerby who noticed the water on the evening of Dec. 12 quickly reported the situation.
Video of the circumstance was documented as it happened by New Bedford Live social media reporter Carlos Felix.
Though the damage may well have been minor, the fact that the accident happened at all reverberates with the concerns that New Bedford state Sen. Mark Montigny has expressed about alleged deferred maintenance at the building, the now-closed home of UMass Dartmouth’s arts campus in the heart of the city’s downtown.
Montigny this year passed legislation requiring Inspector General Jeffrey Shapiro to investigate whether Downey and UMD failed to perform adequate repair and upkeep on the structure over the 22 years between 2001 and 2023. That’s when the building housed the College of Visual and Performing Arts in downtown New Bedford.
After he ordered the city campus closed in August, UMass Dartmouth Chancellor Mark Fuller made the eyebrow-raising claims that deferred maintenance at the structure could cost as much as $75 million.There’s been documentation now discrediting Fuller’s claims about the maintenance costs of the 1915-built structure that has been home to the CVPA’s graduate program these last two decades. Fuller has acknowledged that the number came out of nothing more than a verbal conversation with state government officials.
We’ve been writing recently about Chancellor Fuller — he’s the career academic administrator that UMass President Marty Meehan brought down here from UMass Amherst three years ago to lead the South Coast’s public university. Fuller is the second of two UMD chancellors over the last decade that Meehan, the former congressmen reincarnated as the president of the whole state university system, has saddled UMass Dartmouth with. Advocates for the appointment of an administrator from the South Coast were ignored both times.
Without notifying either Montigny, New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell or the student body of the CVPA ahead of time, Fuller announced on Aug. 14 the closure of the CVPA campus by way of an open letter to the community. It was just two weeks before classes were to begin.
Too expensive to run the Star Store, the chancellor claimed, and no way to get insurance in the wake of Montigny’s failure to fund the lease of the school.
You have to hand it to Fuller, he has chutzpah. He made these claims even though under his own leadership, UMass Dartmouth twice failed to follow through on Montigny’s wishes that the school purchase the Star Store building for just $1.
It’s puzzling.
Montigny himself has said that in his initial discussions with Fuller that the latest chancellor was open to buying the building until the state Division of Capital Assets and Management (DCAMM) held it all up. DCAMM oversees the care, sale and disposition of all state buildings.
But I’m not sure the good state senator is not being had by Fuller on this. Because it’s now clear that Gov. Maura Healey herself is claiming, well sort of vaguely, that she’s open to the university coming back to New Bedford. But it’s Fuller himself who is now saying that he doesn’t see a pathway for moving the university’s art school back to downtown New Bedford. And that he is actually considering building a one-story addition for the former New Bedford MFA program to the Dartmouth campus CVPA building.
In fact, Fuller is a guy who has had a series of terribly serious reasons for why the closure of the New Bedford campus that he personally ordered is not at all his fault. He has assiduously blamed two obscure state agencies — DCAMM and the UMass Building Authority (UMBA) — for thwarting the purchase. He also blames building developer and owner Paul Downey for objecting to the sale when UMass Dartmouth missed a purchase deadline. And of course, he’s blamed Sen. Montigny for not continuing to fund the university’s lease of a building that it had refused to purchase for $1 at the end of its initial 20-year lease. For his part, Montigny has pointed out that in addition to the good price, Downey’s mortgage for the redevelopment of the building had been paid off in 2021.
“You must ask DCAMM or UMBA who had the authority to act on this matter,” wrote Ryan Merrill, the university’s director of strategic communications, when I asked how the chancellor could possibly have missed the state’s purchase deadline.
Fuller has tried mightily to cultivate an image of a down-to-earth guy who’s happy to mix it up with the people and region that he’s been placed in charge of. But whenever he’s criticized, he always reverts back to the prepared statements of his Office of Strategic Communications.
Let’s be candid, chancellor.
Anyone who thinks that DCAMM would not purchase the Star Store for a downtown New Bedford arts school if the local state university had really wanted it, doesn’t understand how Massachusetts politics works. Former Gov. Charlie Baker and present Gov. Healey could have both fixed this debacle in a minute if UMass Dartmouth and President Meehan had wanted them to.
Baker evidently eventually tried to force UMD to do it, but then there was the UMass Building Authority, with five of its 11 members coming from the state university board of trustees, somehow missing the purchase deadline. Isn’t that a coincidence that UMBA should miss the purchase deadline on a building that they were under direct order of the governor to buy?
(By the way, despite Ryan Merrill’s press statement to ask them, both DCAMM and UMBA have refused to answer any questions about the failure to purchase the Star Store, and the failure to meet the deadline.)
UMBA is no doubt under the heavy influence of President Meehan and his board of trustees. And none of them are from New Bedford since Margaret Xifaras’ untimely passing in 2019. Well, except for a student representative from UMass Law who has declined to return phone calls from The New Bedford Light.
Chancellor Fuller may think it’s convincing to have Mr. Merrill send out emails stating that the press would have to ask DCAMM and UMBA if it wants to know why UMass Dartmouth screwed up both the Star Store purchase and missed the deadline. But anyone who understands state and university politics and has an ounce of common sense knows that the state agencies are political entities. As I said, If the university really wanted the New Bedford campus, the agencies would be on board.
So this little Dec. 12 flood happened. But the Star Store building is actually in much better shape than most century-old buildings downtown, according to those familiar with the area’s real estate. Mark Champagne, the New Bedford School Department city facilities manager, put the cost of maintenance between $17 and $20 million, or $30 to $55 million cheaper than Fuller.
It’s been left to a couple of Master of Fine Arts students, deprived by the university of their Star Store studios and the large-scale gas-fired kilns that they need, to show a true commitment to working-class New Bedford. You know, the city a few miles down the road from what some UMD folks call their “university in the woods.”
I do have to hand it to you, Chancellor Fuller. You keep on the move.
Earlier this year you said the best way for the CVPA to stay in downtown New Bedford was for the university to continue leasing it from a third party, in this case owner Paul Downey. You have given that as a reason for taking a pass on exercising the option to buy the Star Store for a buck.
In depth: Continuing Star Store coverage
Read all The Light’s coverage of the departure of UMass Dartmouth’s College of Visual and Performing Arts from the Star Store.
And yes, neither DCAMM nor UMBA have declined to answer press questions about why they did what they did to block the Star Store purchase. Perhaps the $90,000 that Paul Downey spent lobbying the state on the Star Store might be a good start for those seeking an explanation. In any event, now that the roles of DCAMM and UMBA preventing the purchase are well known, it’s really simply a matter of Chancellor Fuller joining with Sen. Montigny and Mayor Mitchell in lobbying the governor to bring it back.
That is unless Gov. Healey and President Meehan are actually instructing the state alphabet agencies to thwart New Bedford and help you with the move to Dartmouth. But even if that’s not the case, UMD, and you really want to stay in New Bedford, why not speak up against DCAMM and UMBA? Unless you actually agree with them. Which by your inflated arguments about the cost of the maintenance, you seem to.
You see the distinction the chancellor is trying to make. It’s the state agencies that actually do the buying and selling. So of course it’s not his fault, or UMass Dartmouth’s fault, that the sales never went through. Even though he never speaks up against them.
Fuller is adept at posturing but not so much at being straightforward.
Myself, I find it extremely hard to believe that the agencies are doing this without knowing that it is exactly what both UMass Dartmouth, the UMass system and Gov. Healey herself want.
Fuller has now shifted his position on a third-party lease being the best option.
Now he’s saying the university needs to build its own new structure on the Dartmouth campus because it needs to control the Master of Fine Arts building itself. Everything has changed, he says, because of what happened with the Star Store funding.
“We’re looking at options in terms of, you know, perhaps new facilities on campus that we can control, and not be, you know, subjected to exit, if you will, based on political whims,” Fuller told Rhode Island public radio reporter Ben Berke.
By “political whims” he’s of course referring to Sen. Montigny.
I myself have a few questions about that, Chancellor Fuller. Because you know, you could have owned the New Bedford building for $1, and you know, because they say your $75 million figure is bogus, and you know, because with the exception of the Star Store roof and the HVAC systems (for which there is already state money set aside), you know none of the maintenance needs to be done immediately.
You see what Fuller has done.
First he constructed the equation one way to yield the result he wanted. And then he constructed the equation the other way to yield an opposite result he wanted.
What Fuller really wants is to not have to run a downtown New Bedford campus. If he’s building a CVPA addition in Dartmouth, he could certainly build one on one of the empty lots in downtown New Bedford for the same price as the addition on the Dartmouth campus. Certainly the mayor of New Bedford would help him facilitate that.
No, what Fuller wants is to spend his money on what UMD likes to call “the campus,” as if the school’s only campus is in Dartmouth.
There are some crazy ideas out there on that Dartmouth campus. You hear talk like we’re going to be a great, small research university, and the blather about how we’ll be known as “the university in the Dartmouth woods.” It’s a theme, and a theme that does not include downtown New Bedford.
New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, one of the guys along with Sen. Montigny that Fuller didn’t inform ahead of time that he planned to close the city campus, has said the city would be willing to be the landlord, or a nonprofit could do it. The talk about a one-story addition is designed to quickly shut down that idea from gaining any traction.
Yes, a city or nonprofit owned CVPA building in New Bedford would still be dependent on state subsidies but so are the overall campuses of all state universities after all. And even Montigny, has always said the state would subsidize a New Bedford CVPA, at least until it could get on its feet, as long as Fuller would just buy the damn building for $1.
A lot of this goes back to the fact the state of Massachusetts has set up a UMass funding system in which UMass Dartmouth is supposed to finance itself in the same manner as the much bigger, successful research universities like UMass Amherst and UMass Lowell. So Fuller, and the short-term UMass Dartmouth chancellors before him, are perpetually in a state of panic about how they are going to pay the bills.
We have not heard word one from Sen. Montigny or any of the New Bedford House members about the funding inequities of the UMass system, but they should begin exploring it.
The two House members who solely represent New Bedford — Tony Cabral and Chris Hendricks — did not return my phone calls this week. I’ve publicly criticized them for cowardly deferring to Montigny, you know.
It doesn’t matter. The current UMass funding system is a problem that President Meehan and the board of trustees should also be prioritizing, and advocating to the Legislature. The unfairness of approaching the financing of the cash-strapped UMass Dartmouth and UMass Boston in the same way that you fund UMass Amherst and UMass Lowell is outrageous.
So even as Fuller and Meehan are trying to close down the New Bedford fine arts campus once and for all, both Mitchell and Montigny say they have not given up on it.
Mitchell says that in the past weeks he has talked to several of the key players about bringing UMD arts and design programs back to New Bedford, including Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll.
“I’m having active discussions with the governor’s office about restoring programs at the Star Store,” he said.
Audra Riding, a spokeswoman for Montigny, directly addressed the university’s blaming of the longtime state senator for not funding further leasing money.
They can continue to cast blame, she said, while ignoring Montigny’s support of UMass Dartmouth for 23 years, including an $8 million bond for a new HVAC system that it asked for in 2018. “That is their choice,” Riding said. “At this point, we are looking forward to the results of the Inspector General’s review and continuing to engage stakeholders on meaningful discussions.”
Riding said that unfortunately there is no known timeline for when Inspector General Shapiro’s investigation will be completed.
Though Mitchell and Montigny may be discussing solutions with the Healey administration, it’s been four months since Fuller pulled the plug on the New Bedford campus, and there’s been not the remotest hint of a deal.
For her part, Gov. Healey seems kind of sympathetic to the city’s advocacy for an arts school in the downtown. But she also seemed to have fully bought into UMass Dartmouth’s argument that Montigny’s lack of funding caused the whole problem during a Nov. 27 interview on Jim Braude and Margery Eagan’s “Boston Public Radio” program on WGBH.
“The university was planning on continuing to run this program at this location in New Bedford,” she said. “And then at the very last minute the Legislature cut what would have been the rent for the building.”
Healey did not check Montigny by name, and maybe she’s also trying to put pressure on the House members for deferring to him by pulling out their own Star Store funding after Montigny did not put funding in on the Senate side. They themselves have said they deferred to him as he had led the way on the creation of the school.
Healey on Jim and Margery’s show also made no mention of the fact that the university, by way of DCAMM and UMBA, had declined to exercise its option to buy the structure for $1 in 2021, and again missed the deadline for buying it for the same price in 2022.
So it may be that the governor is fine with what the university, DCAMM and UMBA did in not buying the building. Maybe she agrees it’s too expensive for the university. She also said nothing about the inspector general’s investigation. Does she not care if taxpayers dollars were wasted in not maintaining these buildings?
I get Montigny’s point about not paying more money to Downey — who hired the high-powered lobbyists to protect his interests. And I understand our state senator’s frustration with UMass Dartmouth and the state’s alphabet agencies. But I think he should have kept the money in the state budget until he figured out a way to make the university, DCAMM and UMBA take the building. I don’t think it was worth New Bedford losing the school in order to do this inspector general investigation.
Healey did say that Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll and herself have talked about the New Bedford situation and the importance of art and culture as an economic engine and driver. “And so my hope is something will be able to be worked out there, that will provide that downtown with the vibrancy that it needs,” she said. “I know those discussions are ongoing.”
Note that the governor doesn’t specifically say a UMass Dartmouth CVPA school.
Eagan tried to press her on the abrupt closure of the Star Store and the upheaval it caused the students, but Healey claimed there are two sides to the argument of whether the school failed to provide services. That seems astonishingly out of touch with what actually happened to these students and the lack of access to things they had a right to expect from UMass Dartmouth.
The governor then again blamed the Legislature’s lack of funding.
“At the end of the day, the university didn’t get the funding to pay the rent,” she said. “And that’s something that they had planned on, counted on.”
So much for the political power of Mitchell and Montigny.
Healey, without giving any details, left the door open a fuzzy crack, to a deal between the Legislature, city and university.
“I think what’s important here is that everybody is continuing to talk about this and my hope is that something works out,”
Her office sent me a separate statement that expressed the same hope. But the statement also didn’t make it clear they were negotiating over the return of the CVPA to New Bedford.
“Our administration is committed to supporting the economic vitality of New Bedford and the region,” wrote Karissa Hand, as spokesperson for the governor. “We have heard the concerns raised by local officials and the community, and we continue to be in discussion about the best steps forward for the Star Store building.”
Email columnist Jack Spillane at jspillane@newbedfordlight.org.
The only winner here is Paul Downey. 63M over 21 years with little or no PM was a bonanza for him and he still retains the bldg.
At this point Chancellor Fuller is in full bunker mentality and there is no point to attempting a negotiated settlement. He will consider getting his own way a victory regardless of the cost. A scorched earth victory is better than none. So what if the students were suckered in with a bait and switch. Fuller guarantees they will get their credentials even if they don’t get the education promised “so what’s the problem? ” So what if that damages the university’s reputation. So what that the students, the host community and its leaders were deceived by a diabolical fait accompli and then fed excuses that were quickly proven false. So what if Umass Dartmouth now has a bitter and rancid taste to many. One thing though. Fuller will not emerge unscathed. Thanks to these articles any future google search will reveal his priorities lay in winning and not educating.
Good article, but DCAMM is hardly “obscure” as it certifies contractors that work on nearly every public construction project in Massachusetts. Anyone who has ever had a management role in construction in the state knows who they are.
Interesting comment regarding Montigny’s unattentiveness. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t he have a history of leaving accident scenes?
I think of the symbiotic union of the art students and city of New Bedford which the students bring to life by sharing their talents and gifts with everyone in the greater New Bedford community…like Kilburn Mill and Hatch Street…and the light they spread to the downtown eateries…UMASS gave HOPE to New Bedford and now the ZITERION is closing for repairs…I am 65 yrs old and our eldest got her law degree graduating from the first class at UMASS DARTMOUTH LAW and because of her work in the city as a student working Paul Walsh’s sister I believe that affected New Bedford in a better way but she too was a student yet totally involved and was a student judge at the time at UMASS DARTMOUTH…SO IN LIGHT OF STUDENT FELLINGSAYBE HAVE A MOCK TRIAL AT UMASS ABOUT THIS WHOLE ISSUE TO SEE IF OTHER RESOLUTIONS COULD BE MADE IN THE FUTURE FOR EVERYONE AS THE CITY OF NEW BEDFORD IS A GEM NOT WORTH LOSING
Jack Spillane has documented how the art students have struggled, against the odds, but with the help of new-found UMD workers, to bring art back to the downtown. These students care about downtown’s art renaissance and they’ve added to it. Meanwhile, Jack takes us on a time journey that can be likened to a modern day “artists in wonderland” tale whose end is still not apparent. It’s troubling.
He explores the warren of rabbit-holes that administrators began burrowing years before Star Store’s closure, specifically, those first holes at DCAM and UMBA where blame was laid for not purchasing the building for $1. The next rabbit hole burrowed into Beacon Hill where budgetary and personal mishaps led to the legislative withdrawal of Star Store’s funds: unfortunately, the hole stopped just short of the Governor’s office. Holes were dug in the direction of an insurance company, Star Store’s owner, erstwhile maintenance “estimates” of $25-75 million (initiated, of course, merely by “discussions” with DCAM). More holes were dug in the direction of UMD’s food service, the university’s tram service and the city’s ban on street parking: all excuses to justify abandonment. These holes verbally burrowed over the past months were merely to confuse rather than enlighten.
Oddly enough, there was never a verbal hole dug in the direction of City Hall and the Mayor’s office. The Mayor was left out in the cold even though he held a bag of resources that could solve Star Store’s problems.
Likewise the hole dug to Beacon Hill stopped at “blame” and failed to proceed to the city’s delegation where “solutions” might have taken place.
Apparently administrators were interested only in creating the maze of excuses unearthed by Spillane’s reporting.
But Spillane also shed light on UMD’s plan to build a new building for the art school.
Thinking about it, it strikes as a preposterous plan. The Star Store is 86,274 sq ft and can be leased for $1 from the city. Deferred maintenance is honestly estimated at $8,000,000 over 10 years. Yearly operating costs for typical campus buildings in the northeast are $7.70/sq. ft, or roughly $664,309 per year for the Star Store. Parking, transportation and food can all be provided in conjunction with the city, SRTA and UMD’s food service or GNBVoke.
Compare this with new campus construction at $714/sq.ft. If a comparable sized building is envisioned, construction would be at least $61,599,336. A building half Star Store’s size would be just over $30,000,000. Bond amortization and operating costs would greatly overshadow any costs associated with the Star Store campus, and the benefits would be hidden from public view “in the woods”.
The Chancellor has characterized his decision to abandon New Bedford, in broad daylight, in terms of prudent financial management and concern for tuition levels. Yet he proposes a solution that is far more expensive, much less accessible and out of line with UMD’s stated goal of enhancing the area’s economic development.
One can only be amazed at how this academic outsider can so easily turn the region’s art world on its head without ever consulting anyone. Does he possess some regional economic insight that local interests lack?
As 2023 closes out, the downtown shows signs of improvement but now has a huge Star Store scar. Ironic that just as the long-vacant Keystone site is being developed by outside interests who see opportunity in the downtown, the university outside administrator is willingly abandoning its long successful city campus.
Ironic too that as the university hauled precious art out of the downtown, enterprising students (with help from concerned local UMD employees) brought some of that art and artisanship back to downtown in an attractive art district gallery. Would the administrators be so dedicated and diligent!
One can only hope that 2024 provides Spillane with the story of how sober and right thinking minds in Boston, Lowell and New Bedford prevail to heal the scar by bringing the CVPA back where it belongs.