By Joan F. Simoneau, Community reporter
Marlborough-Developers of a former shoe factory at 110 Pleasant St. are asking to amend a special permit to allow increasing the number of residential condominiums by one from 17 to 18, and deleting an earlier request for office space on the ground floor. The request made by Attorney Arthur Bergeron, representing the owners, was proposed to the City Council at the Dec. 21 meeting and referred to the Urban Affairs Committee for study and recommendation. A public hearing has been scheduled for Monday, Jan. 25.
Formerly the B.A. Corbin Shoe factory, manufacturers of Spaulding golf shoes, half the property was demolished for parking, with the remainder to be used for offices under the name Corbin Plaza. The project was completed in early 2015.
The current developers have renamed it in memory of S. Herbert Howe, the city’s first mayor. The location had been a major tax problem for the better part of three decades, officials said, including the recording of tax liens in 1988 and 1990; a petition to foreclose in 1992; an agreement to pay all back taxes in 1998, and a second petition of foreclosure recorded and awarded. Any hope of collecting back taxes faded when the former owner, Richard Bland and the Corbin Plaza Corporation, filed bankruptcy in October 2007.
In 2008 the property was foreclosed by the city for non-payment of about $750,000 in taxes, with liens dating back to 1979. About a year after taking the property, a series of auctions were held until 2011 when it was bought by Stas Burdan and Alex Yarov of Stoughton, the same developers who renovated the former St. Mary’s Church on Broad Street in Marlborough.