Nowhere does the chicken and the egg conundrum ring truer than in Springfield – which should come first, a supermarket to attract greater demographic diversity in the downtown, or market-rate apartments to give those same people an actual place to live?

Inner-city Springfield residents, many if not most of whom depend on public transportation, have long bemoaned the fact that there is no grocery store available to them in the center of town. And economic development officials know that an important ingredient for growing the tax base is to diversify housing options in the city to court the kind of professionals that would help drive a resurrection of the local economy through spending power.

The trouble is, there’s nowhere for recent college graduates or professionals that end up working downtown to live near the central business district, especially if they don’t qualify for subsidized housing, which occupies the lion’s share of the downtown market. But that all looks like it may be changing soon – albeit slowly.

An Abundance Of Sites

Earlier this year, New Haven, Conn.-based CSM North was named the preferred developer of 195 State St., the former Springfield School Department headquarters. The developer – who did not return calls seeking comment for this story – has proposed creating 30 to 35 market-rate apartments, and is expected to start construction in the spring.

Another project the city has been pushing for years at Court Square is also expected to include market-rate apartments, and is closer than ever to being built. The Springfield Redevelopment Authority, which owns a six-story office building at 13-31 Elm St. built in 1892 and four connected properties, designated OPAL Real Estate Group as the preferred developer of the properties. It is unclear yet how many residential units will be included in the six-story building, and it is possible the other properties will be folded into the project. OPAL is owned by Peter Picknelly, president of Peter Pan Bus Lines, and could not be reached by press time.

There were other apartment projects in the works in the southern part of the city – until a tornado ripped through the South End this summer, said Don Courtemanche, executive director of the city’s Business Improvement District. One is the former South End Community Center, which is now a large pile of rubble, and several sites along the Connecticut River, some now used as surface parking lots, he said.

“But the South End now has an abundance of building sites … where buildings are now just rubble because of the tornado,” Courtemanche told Banker & Tradesman. “Market-rate housing is the number one goal to bring additional diversity to the area. We just need a developer to say, ‘That’s where I want to put a building.’”

Nine To Five

On the other end of the riddle is the problem of a grocery store. The closest one is about a mile walk from downtown, over Memorial Bridge and into West Springfield, said Allan Blair, president of the Economic Development Council of Western Massachusetts.

Courtenmache said the Tower Square mall, currently approaching 50 percent vacancy, is the “perfect location” for such a use.

“You can’t get a more centralized location than Tower Square,” he said. “The need already exists for about a thousand housing units downtown, as well as the 8,000 employees that work downtown. The need is here now, so let’s build it and get it in place.”

That’s exactly what Fred Christensen, senior property manager for CB Richard Ellis – in charge of the mall – hopes to do. The plan is to designate one of the empty spaces in the mall to a store of about 10,000 square feet. Christensen said the grocery chain Aldi has that prototype, but mentioned the company purely as an example. He would not specify what companies he is courting, and said it is still too early in the process to talk about a timeline for any store opening.

“A while ago we identified a distinct lack of availability for downtown residents for grocery shopping besides convenience stores,” Christensen said. “Combine that with the existing potential of downtown employees that could find it convenient to shop there on their way home. Maybe they could call down order and pick it up on their way home, and there’s plenty of need.”

Taylor Newton, a broker with King & Newton brokerage, said the rent in the mall might be more than most grocers in that market could pay to be profitable, though that kind of space would be “easy enough” to find elsewhere downtown.

“Wherever [a grocer] goes, it could only help,” Newton said.

Additionally, William Low, senior vice president for NAI Plotkin, said he does not think there is the need for a grocery store in that location because the central business district has become such a “nine to five” place. Workers leave the city for their suburban homes as soon as they get out of work, and most would not have an interest in shopping downtown when they can just do it near their homes.

“I frankly don’t see it happening,” he said. “We need more people living there first. Maybe it would work if they offered a year or two of nominal or free rent.”