A Roxbury hardware store once at the center of an ambitious $100 million redevelopment plan, and then entangled in disgraced state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson’s bribery scandal, is now battling to stave off a foreclosure auction.
Christopher Marrano, co-owner of Harrison Supply Co., blames his current predicament on the two Boston politicians arrested on federal corruption charges a year and a half ago.
“We wouldn’t be in this position if it weren’t for Dianne Wilkerson and Chuck Turner,” Marrano said bitterly.
Harrison Supply sits at the corner of Harrison Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard in Roxbury. Its 55,000-square-foot lot abuts a parcel of equal size, dubbed Parcel 8, which the state seized decades ago to clear the way for an inner belt highway that was never built.
Since 2001, Marrano had been working with Roxbury developer Azid Mohammed to redevelop his parcel in conjunction with the state-owned Parcel 8. Mohammed envisioned a $100 million mixed-use development rising on the parcels.
The project would have sat at the nexus of two emerging development corridors, one running from lower Washington Street to Dudley Square, the other running along the path of the doomed highway, from Crosstown Center to Tremont Street and the stalled $400 million Ruggles Place development.
According to Wilkerson’s federal bribery indictment, Mohammed feared the powerful politician “would not support his development plans in the absence of payments.” Wilkerson had the power to control when the state would release Parcel 8, and potentially, to whom. So, to curry favor with Wilkerson, Mohammed allegedly made a series of payments to the state senator, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office.
The FBI alleged that Wilkerson took $15,000 in bribes from a pair of undercover agents, whom she thought were out-of-state businessmen interested in developing Parcel 8. She is said to have pressured Mohammed to join his Parcel 8 project with the two feds, while filing special legislation to hand a long-term, no-bid lease on Parcel 8 to Mohammed’s firm.
Wilkerson and Turner pleaded not guilty to the corruption charges, while Mohammed has not been charged. Marrano has said he didn’t know about Mohammed’s alleged payments to the disgraced senator.
“We were basing all our future on what Wilkerson kept telling us, that she had a developer for us, she had a tenant,” Marrano said.
Because of the investors Wilkerson told Marrano she had lined up, he stopped looking for other investors for his parcel, which is assessed by the city of Boston at $2.7 million. “We weren’t taking offers or anything,” Marrano said. That reliance on Wilkerson left Marrano stranded without a buyer when the development market dried up, Wilkerson wound up in cuffs, and the deep pockets he was counting on turned out to belong to the FBI.
“Four days before everything came down, we met with these developers, who turned out to be the FBI,” Marrano said. “That next Tuesday, they were here questioning me.”
Century Bank is attempting the foreclosure after Harrison Supply defaulted on a $1.33 million mortgage. Century has scheduled an auction for March 11. Marrano told Banker & Tradesman his family hoped to cut a deal with the bank and dodge the auction block. Marrano’s mother is refinancing her home to get the cash to pay down the Century mortgage, he said.
