Pat moves to Northampton State Hospital when his father becomes the last Superintendent.

Transcript

Patrick M. Goggins interview, Northampton State Hospital

[date unknown]

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Let’s get the preliminaries out of the way. This is the Northampton State Hospital Oral History Project and I am Christopher J. Sparks, interviewing Pat Goggins at NCTV Studios in lovely downtown Northampton, Massachusetts. So, Pat, can you state your full name and how to spell it.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: Sure. P-a-t-r-i-c-k, middle initial is M, last name: G-o-g-g-i-n-s.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Excellent, thank you. First question, best question: Hospital Hill sledding, yes or no?

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: Yes. Right out the backdoor of my house.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Wow.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: Now, our house—there’s a new building presently under construction where our house on the state hospital was located and it was basically the top of an apple orchard that surrounded—close to the entrance of the state hospital. And—it was oftentimes during the course of a winter when the—when a snowstorm would have an icy end to it, in which case, you’d get a crusty top to the snow.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: We were able to leave the backdoor of our house, work our way through the apple orchard without injury, and then ripping down Hospital Hill, which, at the time, such circumstances is that could have taken you almost all the way down to the bridge crossing West Street.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right, right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: So yes, a lot of—history there. Plus, in responding to a dare or two, I would stand on the top of the toboggan and navigate my way through, usually ending up with a tumble and a fall and a lot of potentially difficult situations, but no broken bones.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: That sounds especially dangerous.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: Yes, it was.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: I’ve sledded on a hill and I’ve never (laughs) stood up on my sled—

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: Toboggan. I mean, just from the hill part, it’s tough. But we did it right from our backyard. I have—I’m one of seven and I was the oldest and so we would spend a lot of time during the winter months making great use of Hospital Hill. As a matter of fact, there used to be a ski tow—a rope ski tow on the far north side of Hospital—Hospital Hill, which was used by the Smith College ski team. And when the land was being divvied up as part of the disposition of the hospital, it—Hospital Hill is under the care, custody, and control, presently, of Smith College. So they do a good job of maintaining it and hopefully, it’ll be available for generations to come in Northampton to enjoy it, because it’s really been a great spot for a long time.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Yes, yes, very well known. So are you—did you come from Northampton?

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: No, I was not born in Northampton. I was born in Pittsfield, lived there until I was twelve, and was in junior high when I—my father got the job at Northampton State Hospital, which—eventually he became the superintendent and—he was originally the business manager. And we moved from Pittsfield to Northampton in 1959—

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Wow.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: —in November of 1959.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: What do you remember about Northampton then?

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: It was like Back to the Future. Pittsfield were—was at the time, a city of sixty thousand people and it was—close to sixty thousand people. It was—it was a great community to grow up in as an active kid; I was involved in all of the different kinds of sports. The general—the main employer of people in Pittsfield was the G.E. and it provided great things for the local economy. It, with the help of Crane Paper, which prints the paper for—or, which makes the paper that’s printed for our currency, and they’re located in Dalton—both of those large industries played a tremendous role in the economy of Pittsfield. And, as a result, they had parades and—two or three parades—there were big parades down the North Street, which is the main street of Pittsfield—and they helped fund the building of the boys’ club and the girls’ club and—so they were very active in the community in a way that made the community be able to benefit from it tremendously and I made great use of the things on a personal level that—that those—that the G.E. and Crane Paper were—made possible. So it was very difficult for me, as a twelve year old, in seventh grade, having already started seventh grade for two and a half months in Pittsfield, suddenly come down to Northampton and to have to integrate into a junior high school which really, most people had long established their friends and I had to kind of feel my way along. I—it was a difficult transition for me. But eventually the—I got to meet a lot of new kids and played a lot of sports with them, so that was kind of the way that helped me to get to know a lot of people and to this day, I’m very friendly with many of my—my classmates and we all graduated from this very high school in 1965. But the Northampton downtown looked nothing like what you see now. It was—there was a lot of empty storefronts and the second and third floors of most of the buildings downtown weren’t used at all. The first Saturday that I lived here in Northampton—our family moved here—I walked down Hospital Hill to downtown—to the YMCA, which was about the size of this room. It had a pool that was half the size of this room. And it was falling apart. And having left really nice facilities in Pittsfield, that was a challenge to get comfortable with that. But, you know, eventually, things improved in the city and, actually, Pittsfield went the other way, where the problems that the G.E. encountered in the seventies and eighties with PCBs and everything else—they’re forty-two thousand now. The interesting thing about our population in Northampton is that it’s maintained.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: Thirty thousand in 1959, thirty thousand today. So the make-up of the population here in Northampton has changed a lot and the characteristics of the community changed as a result. And so I had the benefit of growing up in a community that I really enjoyed and participated in in a way that a lot kids participated in the community and then, I was able to be a part of the transformation of Northampton in a lot of different ways to what it is today. So I’ve been in a good spot in both ends as it’s turned out. But those twelve- to fifteen-year-old years are very challenging years for a lot of reasons and—yeah, it was like Back to the Future for me.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: And you didn’t just move to Northampton, you moved to the state hospital.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: That’s an interesting story in and of itself, because when my father told us—myself and my five siblings at the time—or, my four siblings at the time—told us that we were going to be moving to Northampton, you know, he said, “Oh, well, okay, what are we going to do, you know?” And so—but the response of the kids that I hung around with in Pittsfield was interesting because, really, the only thing they knew about Northampton was that’s where the “nuthouse” was. That’s what it was called. And I’m certainly not using that, I’m just telling the story here. So the interesting thing was that not only were we moving to Northampton, but we were moving to—

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: —the “nuthouse.” So that was—I didn’t want to make it, to tell you the truth. And it was a very—it was something I’d never been exposed to. And it was—it was pre-dating the period of—of advocacy for changes that were needed in mental health, so it was what it was. And so I had to—it took me a long time to learn to accept and understand that. I didn’t have a lot of my friends from Pittsfield asking to come over to visit us.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: But it was a great place in many other ways to grow up for a family of seven with acres and acres and acres to wander and there were ball fields and basketball court and things like that that we were able to take advantage of in a way that started to make it feel better. And at that period of time, in the sixties, it was a facility that was—well taken care of, exteriorly, but the problems that Steve Schwartz and other identified and it eventually led to the consent decree in the late seventies were—were starting to be identified and noticeable, particularly in terms of the treatment of, of the patients. There were some patients who worked on the grounds and were, you know, out doing active things to be able to, you know, not be confined in the wards. But there were many, many, many more in the wards. I think it was twenty-five hundred patients and eight hundred employees in three shifts. So that’s a lot going on and, so through my high school years, but mainly during my college years—I commuted to UMass and was able to work in various capacities up at the hospital on the wards and on the ground, in the farm—on the farm. And—so—it was—produced a lot of food on various forms, a lot of vegetables, we were hauling a lot of hay that was used for the—to feed the animals. The—tremendous conditions for growing, right near the Mill River in what was called the Lower Gardens, an area where they have the dog park today. But we worked with a lot of the patients, you know, picking the corn, picking the tomatoes, filling up the crates, and transporting them from the Lower Gardens to the storehouse, where they were then integrated into the needs of the hospital in the kitchens. And, in some cases, I used to have to drive what residual fruit and vegetables were—mostly vegetables—were not going to be used—during the growing season, we had to use them at a certain or else you were just going to be inundated with it—to Belchertown, where they made use of it in—for their school because of—two state institutions.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: So, it was—it was an interesting place, but the deterioration of the—of the facilities was underway by that time. And a lot of it had to do with the fact that there were no advocates prompting the legislature to fund it properly, so they continued to ratchet down the funding, and without the funding, the preventative maintenance couldn’t be done to the buildings and to the wards, and it was—it was a deterioration I was able to observe, kind of, up close, over that twenty year period between when it was—and the consent decree was—was established from when we moved here. So that entire twenty year period is kind of—left a big impression in my mind as to, you know, how—what the connection between proper funding and—and the human needs that were neglected—being neglected at the—at the institution itself. And it was all due to a changing philosophy about the treatment of mental—mentally ill people and how one should—how a community, how an institution should be—should adapt to the needs of mental—mentally ill. And that wasn’t really happening. There was a different evolutions of—of how treatment was supposed to occur, everything from shock treatment, you know, back in the old days, to—and this was the period leading up to when more medications were available, and so—preceding that was this twenty year period that I’m describing that—where things were—not good. Not good, and the treatment reflected the conditions, and the lack of funding.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: So it finally led to its closure. The—this—as I mentioned before, the consent decree occurred in 1978 and—but it wasn’t until 1993 that the last patient left the hospital.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: And that was a period of—that I happened to be very involved with because I held public positions. I was a county commissioner for ten years during the 1980s and I was a city councilor for—in the nineties in Northampton, president of the council and all that that came with this transition occurring, where the community had to—of Northampton had to kind of adjust because with the—the alternative to institutional care was community-based care.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: And community-based care put stress on the community in which was delivering those services in terms of how to handle it and how to find the funding that was going to be needed to turn this new page in mental health care and it was done—it was a challenging time. It was the emergence of a lot of social service agencies to provide those services and it took a while for the funding to catch up with the needs. So the transition immediately, when it took place, between mid-eighties and mid-nineties, was complicated for the community and it created a lot of upheaval, but because of the emergence of social service agencies, and good ones that knew what their role needed to be—that’s where the advocacy then came into play, to properly fund them and to make available to the communities those resources to be able to handle those with mental health needs, because that’s never going to change. That’s always going to be a constant in any community. But it was a direct result of the impact of closing the state hospital that led to this transition in the community itself. I happened to be, you know, as I say, in public positions at the time, so—where—elected positions where we were all part of that process.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: And it was at a time, incidentally, where the community of Northampton was on a resurgence and—and the—which started in, like, the early seventies with FitzWilly’s, as far as I’m concerned. And a lot of that—that change in the complexion of the community was in a positive direction, you know, was bringing—a lot of accolades to the community itself. At the same time, the community had social responsibility to be able to understand the impact of a changing community in other ways. It was changing in terms of business community and all of the quality of life things in a very positive way, but neighborhoods—some neighborhoods, particularly those downtown, were having to absorb more of the immediate impact of the change in philosophy about community-based care because they were downtown and that’s where people needed to be because they couldn’t get around otherwise. And so that was—that was a little gooey. It got to be complicated. And—but I think the community got through that quite well. There was a lot of discussion about it and a lot of people trying to do the right thing and not to be overly reactive, but any time you change the face of community—close an institution that had twenty-five hundred patients, eight hundred employees, it’s going to be impactful. And that impact played out in a lot of different ways. So it’s—it’s kind of how—what got us the way we are.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Yeah.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: When I arrived there, I didn’t know—I was twelve years old. All I knew was I was, you know, moving in a backward direction as far as what I was used to.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: What would you say was your—what would you say is your clearest memory of that time of the state hospital?

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: I thought that the—my immediate impression was, while well-maintained—the hundred acres, if you will, on the top of the hill was very well cared for. People took great pride in it. And that was also—as things started to disappear, that was one of the places where it became quickly obvious. If you look at the VA hospital now, they’re undergoing the same thing.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: And, you know, it’s a sad thing to see (sighs) because it’s—it’s clearly a lack of advocacy for—for proper funding. But, you know, the taxpayers paid for, you know, for the state hospital. They paid for the VA hospital. And it’s up to the taxpayers and their representatives to advocate, to take care of the property, as you would with your own home. And it wasn’t happening.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right. Right. So would you say that there was a sense of community that had deteriorated then on Hospital Hill?

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: Well, (sighs) the—in 1978, the consent decree immediately caused an awful lot of confusion. There were generations and families of people who had worked at the hospital forever on the wards, on the grounds, doing all kinds of things. Many of them lived in the immediate hospital area. And so everybody was nervous. You know, I’d see—run into people all the time, and everybody—“What do you think is going to happen?” And I didn’t know what the heck was going to happen, you know, and that—my father didn’t know what the heck was going to happen. And oh, it was new for everybody. But certainly, changes were going to take place, changes threatening to people when it is—has the potential to impact that employment. So it was a nervous time. And it was a time that—caused an awful lot of people to be negative about a lot of things. And so when, you know—from ’78 on, the institution that they’d known—these employees—for generations was going to dramatically change, and quickly.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: It did so that—that was really—a challenging time for a lot of people. And there was no guidebook on how do you shut down a state hospital. There wasn’t anything available that said, Well, you do a, b, c, and d. It was mostly the obvious: funding isn’t there, you close it up. You don’t get the funding to button up the buildings that you’re closing up, so the buildings then deteriorate.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: So what you saw and what others saw as they went up there over the years that you said, “What’s this all about?” Well, it was deteriorating.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Yeah.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: The city wrestled with that problem too. There was eventually a referendum on the ballot asking the question as to whether not the main complex up there, the main building should be preserved, because it had architectural appeal. Those who felt that it shouldn’t be preserved—looked at it from an economic standpoint. The buildings were massive and they had already—they were already well on their way—this, I believe, was in the year 2000—that this referendum took place.  They were already well on their way to deterioration and the cost of bringing them back productively was enormous. And then the question about how would they eventually be used, no one seemed to have an answer to. But the romantic appeal of those buildings and the—because of the architecture of the buildings, for a lot of people, made them dig in with the idea of them coming down. And it finally passed a local referendum, posing the question, Should they be torn down or should they not be torn down? And that was—at that point, that the city was able to become much more aggressive about trying to turn that facility into an economic engine and to provide—you know, to somehow offset what had been lost by the—by the closure and the fact that it was a good chunk of our local economy. So enormous amount of thought and discussion went into what the future might hold for the hospital, with input coming over a period of fifteen years from many directions. It was an active project even before it began in terms of the city, because everyone had different thoughts on how the property should made useful and what it might do to become once again a productive economic engine. And—so it—all this community took—all this conversation took place in a community that was also confused by whether the building had any value in and of themselves. So that was kind of a sidebar, sidetrack, to the end result, but it had to be done and the community had to be satisfied the discussion took place. Debate, disagreement, and finally a vote. And once that vote was in hand and the project was basically looked at as something that hopefully someone would want to tackle. Interestingly enough, no private developers wanted to touch it because it had significant environmental concerns that were going to be—the cost of which—remediation of which was going to be put off on the developers and it had serious problems from an infrastructure standpoint because it was started—it was built in the, you know, late 1800s. So, in addition to that, the environmental concerns started with a power plant at the bottom of Hospital Hill, off on Earl Street, that was a coal plant, which sent high-pressure steam all throughout the institution, underground pipes and tunnels and some things like that. The tunnels in and of themselves were—were loaded with asbestos. When I worked in the kitchen, I used to have to transport food from the kitchen through the tunnels to the various places—through the various buildings in the campus.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Like the—on the main campus—

(unknown person coughing)

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: —down through the large tunnel—

(unknown person coughing)

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: —across sixty-six to Geadle(??)?

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: No, that—the—the main campus.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Got it.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: South of the—campus up on the hill, the main building complex. And so—that was spooky. (laughs) And the little varmints running along with you in the tunnels. I—yeah. Yeah. I was—it was—you know, it was just something that the low person on the totem pole got to do (laughs) and—but, you know—so we had all these tunnels and loaded with asbestos and eesh. So it was a lot of problems up there. So no private developer, and everyone had a chance to look at the RFP—request for proposal—and they all said, “Are you kidding me? I’m not going to—where’s that money going to come from.” So finally, with the help of—state Senator Stan Rosenberg and eventually Peter Koka(??), we were able to get a considerable amount of funding as a community to deal with the—the need to address the environmental issues: eight million dollars and another four million dollar state funding source came through the same elected officials to do the infrastructure. So it then became something that had only to deal with the—the local economy and the ability to eventually absorb the kind of development that one would need to see happen up there and so—it still didn’t appeal to any (laughs) private developers. And it was—and the—finally a—The Community Builders, a national affordable housing corporation, fell on the sword (laughs) and became the first developer. They—their specialty was housing. This was a project that was designed—that the city eventually designed that had many other elements to it in addition to residential. So while they were very accomplished on the residential end, they found the commercial and industrial end of what was—what they were hoping to have up there—the city was hoping to have up there—challenging. So eventually, they wanted out. They put the first subdivision—housing subdivision up on Route 66 and that was really quite successful and that was their bailiwick. That was the kind of thing they could—they could be—feel very capable of handling. It’s called Ice Pond Drive and that’s always a nice example of how you can blend market and affordable housing together and they felt quite proud that that had accomplished—that was accomplished. But at that point, I—I have to back up here, because I think Bill Nagle was still the state rep. at the time. But Nagle and Rosenberg, at that point, were interceded and that’s when Mass Development, which is a quasi-state agency to provide—help provide economic benefit and stimulus to various communities within the Commonwealth, became the developer. So—and they’re the developer. And I think they’re quite pleased with the project, though I have to say, I mean, we’re so lucky because the taxpayers of Massachusetts paid the eight million and the four million and Mass Development is a quasi-state agency funded by taxpayers from the entire state. And I don’t think there’s another—to my knowledge, I don’t think there’s another project that they have tackled, because this is such a challenging—even under the best of circumstances and the best of communities. It was not something that they duplicated. In fact, they can’t wait to get out of there. Which will be soon. We’re almost done. But it’s—you know, it ended up being something that—I think the conventional wisdom at the time in the legislature was, We’ve got thirteen of these scattered throughout—state hospitals—scattered throughout the state. If we make this one work, they’re all going to benefit from it—all the communities will. Well, what they found to make it work was it took a lot of money. Wasn’t coming from the private sector. So, if it was going to work, it was going to come from the taxpayers. I think it’s tougher to justify that when you’re—there’s no way that you can add all the lots and all the land and all the parcels that have been sold—and I’ve been involved in all them—you can add them all up. You don’t even scratch the surface, in terms of what the property sells for. You don’t even scratch the surface against what has been spent up there.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: So if there had—if the state had experience with another state hospital prior to Northampton State Hospital being developed into the campus that it is now, we’d never have it, because it doesn’t make economic sense. It can’t. So the—the property has value, but the potential to develop such properties and to make them be developed up to contemporary standards with all the requirements that come with it and the costs associated with that is something that no one else has been able to duplicate since, you know, this project started. And there’s been some modest success in various parts of the state. I had to—I’ve had to go to a handful of different communities over the years where they would sit in a—I would sit in front of a group of elected officials and others who pepper me with questions about, you know, what’s the magic bullet, how’s this work.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: And it’s—I would be very candid with them. I would say, “You’re going to have to get the money from some—from the state, because it’s not going to come from the private sector.”

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: So, that’s—that’s just—so we were lucky. We’re a lucky community. Turned out to be, certainly, an economic engine. I think that most people who look at it consider a success. Most—many people in my presence have said, “I always thought this was going to be a success.” And I’m thinking, Yeah, right. I know what the conversation that went on prior to that, so I don’t think there was as much support that—you know, it’s easy to look back and say, “Oh, this is such a beautiful—how could you miss—” Right, yeah. It’s—yeah, it was hard. In the first—I bought the first house that was built up there. Wright Builders built the first house. They got the first developable chunk of property to develop and I was going to handle it for them. So I bought the first house as a model to be used as our office and to show people the quality of construction and Wright Builders built the house right next to it, which is a contrasting style, but to show that that’s what’s available. I bought that and we sat with it for two and a half years before we sold another one. And it was when the world went flat, 2006.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: The project just started to hit the market and the first two and a half years was not—there was nothing going on. So it’s—it wasn’t until, you know, people started better—a little bit better about the economy and better about things in general that it took off and then it took off very nicely from that point on.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Yeah.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: But—

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: And 2006 was the year Old Main that was demolished as well.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: Right. Yeah, that was the start of, you know, that was the start of the emergence of a different—of different concepts on the campus itself, to be able to show where there could be benefit. The residential housing end of the thing was something everyone could understand and relate to. That wasn’t difficult to see. The integrating of commercial and industrial space in that hundred acre complex—now, the hundred acres is only the area around from Hospital Hill up to the back of the community—or, the front of the community gardens. There’s five hundred acres beyond that going out west toward Route 66 and Bird’s Pit(??) Road which is never going to be developed. That’s all with conservation restrictions, some of it owned by the state, some of it is a jail, some of it is owned by the Recreation Department, some of it is owned by Smith School, and so, you know, there’s all of that property that’s never going to have any other use than what you see there now. But the benefit that the community felt came from the fact that there was an area, well-located at the top of Hospital Hill where a lot of things could happen, and so that’s why you see the mix that you see there and that’s part of what people like. It’s called Village Hill for a reason; it’s intended to mimic the villages—the various villages of Northampton. And from an architectural standpoint and from a practical standpoint, as you are in the greater downtown area, there’s a mix of uses. There’s not one part that’s strictly residential. It’s got—most of them have this blend of different uses and that’s what Village Hill was intended to be and I think it’s—as a practical matter, it’s pretty much achieved that and it mimics what we see in other areas. And—plus, it’s, you know, three-quarters of a mile from downtown. It’s walkable and all the other things. We’re a little surprised at the—that the retail slash commercial end of things has taken as long as it has to get going. You know, people want a convenience store, they want a bank, they like a—they like a cleaners, day-in day-out kind of things. That hasn’t started to emerge and the planning people who put so much into this are scratching their head about that. I think as we get to this next phase in the line—which will be the last phase of residential development, which is going to be affordable apartments for the most part and cohousing—I think that’ll top out the number of people living up there. It’s somewhere in the three to four hundred person range. And so the demographics that you need to be able to justify putting the kind of commercial activity up there that I’m suggesting (inaudible) people seem to want will be easier to justify with the larger population base centered right there. So that’s how deep we’re—with fingers crossed. And, you know, the fact that there’s assisted living up there—there’s a lot of different uses and part of the architecture—the architectural challenge was to make everything blend, and that’s where I think everyone should be really proud, because there’s no way of being able to tell the difference between a condominium that’s own—that’s individually owned and an apartment that’s Section 8. There’s no stigma. There’s no way of telling. It just—it’s all a community. And so it’s a nice blend of different kinds of housing needs for—which are reflective of the community in which it exists and so all of the planning that went into that and those involved with it should be congratulated and have been many times because it—there’s a lot of, you know, a lot of local—a lot of people in the local area who were very involved and dedicated to making this something—from the time it started and—in my view, anyway—it’s certainly succeeded. Yeah.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: So looking back on the transformation of Northampton State Hospital, what would you say we would do differently next time?

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: Well, I think that—and the hardest part of doing any project is being able to time the development to an upbeat economy. I mean, you know, it’s one of these things. You know how the economy’s going, but it takes a long time to get to the point where you can build something because you’ve got to—all kinds of approvals you have to go through, and the lender has to approve of it. So the timing of the project was difficult to predict. And it was taken off track by the—the community debate that occurred around saving Old Main, because the economy was really robust when the property became available to be developed and the development started with the assistance of the state-funded infrastructure dollars and remediation dollars that I explained to you earlier. But then the final approval of the development plan—where things would go and what was planned for what section—was completely taken off  track by the—all the disagreement in the community about save Old Main. So that happened to—that discussion happened to be during a very good time in the national and local economy. So then that battle is fought. The referendum takes place. The vote is in. Then the development starts. And in 2005, the world went flat, economically. And this economic downturn took a lot time to come out of, unlike the others that I’ve experienced in my lifetime, which were much shorter duration. This one was prolonged and it was deep.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: So that was coterminous with the—with the development being ready to go. My case in point about buying the house that I bought and expecting that to be something that would be helpful in the very first phase. Well, you know, withstanding a gap of time in the world of development is a recipe for disaster, because you borrow the money, you spend the money getting ready to build, you build with the expectation that they will come, (noise) and the world goes flat. So that makes for a lot of nervousness. And so the project was taken off track. So what would we do? We’d be better prognosticators of such things and not—and time it so that the—that would be something that would not present a—such a huge obstacle at the front of the project.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: But you can’t do that. I’m—in the real world, you don’t know when it’s going to—all those things are going to happen. You can get a idea from—you can get a idea from, you know, what you read and see with your own two eyes, but the real impact of it needs to be felt, and if it’s felt, then you’re already into it—

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Right.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: —and if you’re already into it, no one can accurately answer how long it’s going to take for you to get out of it. And so it stalls things. That may be an impractical answer to your question, “What would you do differently?” but that’s what I see as having the—having the most significant impact there. On the other hand, I don’t know that there’s much that would be done differently on the campus itself, because it’s worked nicely together. It’s got a lot of different opportunities. I’ve talked to you about the non-stigmatization of the populace there and it’s very true. And so you—when you do that kind of planning, you’re doing it with fingers crossed too, but it turned out very well. So, I think the community has benefited from it. And I—and it’s not just those in the community like myself, who are so close to it, but I’ve had to bring—over the years, I’ve been like a tour guide up there, because who everybody comes in the mayor’s office—they send them my way and they say, “Why don’t you see if you can give these people a tour?” Well, I judge by people’s reaction to what I’m explaining as to whether or not it is a success and it’s clearly a success. And all those people who I know, who I’ve known for a lot of time who come up there and see it and said to me, “Oh, back—I always knew that was going to be successful.” I say, “Yeah, sure, okay.” And—but here it is. And it’s an example of the—of a community doing its homework well. And that doesn’t always—it wasn’t always done with agreement. I know when I was on the city council and a lot of this discussion was just taking place, there was wide opinion as to whether this should be done or that should be done or how it should be done. No one had anything other than their gut giving them that reaction, because, as I said, there was no guidebook on how to handle the transformation of the state hospital into a residential and commercial development, but there were feelings that people had, based on their own area of expertise and their own observation that made the—them feel that things should be done differently. So a lot of—that could have created a lot of other problems, but we had a lot of people willing to give a lot of time to that discussion and, at the end of the day, I think the community felt as though those who wanted to had all had a chance to express themselves about it. And—so it’s almost like we knew what we were doing.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Yeah. Great. Well, thank you very much.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: Okay.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: I think that does it for today.

PATRICK M. GOGGINS: Good, good. Well, if it’s helpful to you.

CHRISTOPHER J. SPARKS: Yeah.

[end of video]