It is worth the city of Northampton to reconsider selling the former Registry of Deeds building. I am very familiar with the building having spent many years in its hallways, offices and courtrooms. It has a working elevator, at least four bathrooms spread out on two floors, cold AC for the whole building and a huge amount of free parking next to a PVTA bus stop and a crosswalk.

We were so lucky the state gave the city that building to do what it wants with it. We do not know if any developer will want to buy it as a tear-down and build a new building with some affordable apartments somewhere in it. There is no promise of that city goal in our future. What we can control is what we choose to use that building for, and if we stick to spending a very large amount of money to turn a very old bare-bones church into the community hub for day help for our local homeless, then a discussion is needed on what the true costs will be.

With only an elevator shaft, that building is a very expensive and time-consuming way off from a finished building complete with showers, updated electrical, places to rest, places to eat, offices and places set aside for weather emergencies.

The old Registry of Deeds building needs many improvements and adding showers, but the plumbing system is modern compared to the old church and the current system was used until the building was closed. It would be far less complicated to add showers to the building that already has many bathrooms than to try to retrofit a very old church whose bathrooms, along with the building itself, sat vacant for decades with only very basic improvements attempted.

It’s possible that the former owner of the church had the idea to update the building to ADA compliance but stopped when the proposed costs to do so would have been too expensive for a cafe/nightclub business. That is how the elevator shaft got in the building, but is not by itself counted as a working ADA compliance without the elevator, whatever word salad is used to describe it by the mayor.

It is not too late to reverse course for the city of Northampton and add transparency to this project of providing a place to help our local homeless during office hours, and start valuing the ideas of local residents who were born here or lived here most of their lives.

Sara Elkins lives in Northampton.