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Hopedale History
April 2025
No. 438
Hopedale Economy – 1985
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Twenty-five years ago – April 2000 – Giant Sequoia National Monument proclamation signed by President Bill Clinton in California, preserving one-third of all giant sequoia groves, the world’s largest trees.
In a pre-dawn raid, federal agents seize six-year-old Elián González from his relatives’ home in Miami, Florida.
Fifty years ago – April 1975 – Bill Gates and Paul Allen found Microsoft (at this time known as Micro-Soft) in Albuquerque, New Mexico and release their Altair BASIC interpreter.
The Vietnam War ends with the Fall of Saigon: The Vietnam War concludes as Communist forces from North Vietnam take over Saigon, resulting in mass evacuation of the remaining American troops and South Vietnam civilians. As the capital is taken, South Vietnam surrenders unconditionally and is replaced with a temporary Provisional Government.
One-hundred years ago – April 1925 – The Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes is held in Paris, giving a name to the Art Deco style.
F. Scott Fitzgerald‘s novel The Great Gatsby is published in New York.
News items above are from Wikipedia. For Hopedale news from 25, 50, and 100 years ago, see below this text box.
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Hopedale Economy Rises Above
Factory Closing
The Middlesex News
July 7, 1985
HOPEDALE – When the Draper factory closed down in 1979, nervous town officials knew the community was facing a very uncertain future.
Six tough years later, Hopedale his weathered some bad financial times, and now is seeing its tax base grow, due to the MetroWest building boom.
The turn-of-the-century Draper factory is also getting a boost. It was sold to developer Edward Stimpson, who owns a Wellesley property management firm, for $2.5 million in May. Currently, 30 commercial tenants rent space in the building.
During its heyday, the textile machinery-producing Draper factory completely dominated Hopedale through the sheer size of its massive brick complex – 1.6 million square feet of industrial space – and the political clout that comes with being the employer of 3,000 workers.
The Draper family also owned more than 40 percent of all land in Hopedale. Taxes on the Draper holdings amounted to 30 percent of the municipal budget.
When Rockwell International, which took over the plant in 1967, threatened to sue the town in 1978 for over-estimating the value of its holdings, Hopedale assessors dropped its valuation by $4 million. The move meant the town immediately lost $218,000 in tax revenue.
That tax break came at a particularly bad time, says Town Administrator John Hayes – Proposition 2 ½ was adopted shortly thereafter. The $4 million drop in Hopedale’s overall value translated into $100,000 in tax revenue lost to the town.
After depleting the town’s cash reserves to make up for the Draper tax loss, Hopedale officials ordered cutbacks in municipal services – staffing was reduced, operating hours were slashed and equipment purchases were delayed indefinitely. Money that was previously set aside for emergencies was used instead for routine municipal expenditures. Deficits began cropping up on a regular basis.
Town officials began fighting for every cent, refusing, for example, to pay the town’s assessed $4,500 share of an addition to Blackstone Valley Regional Vocational Technical School.
The most dramatic cutback was the 1981 reorganization of Hopedale’s full-time nine-man Fire Department into a call department with four full-time dispatchers.
Hopedale didn’t lose just tax revenue when the factory closed – it also took on some new expenses.
The sewer lines installed to service the plant (and nearby company-owned houses rented to Draper workers) were taken over by the town. The heating plant built by the company and used free of charge by Town Hall is now a municipal expense.
There were other lost benefits, too, ones tougher to put a price tag on, according to Selectman Edward Scott. There was a feeling in Hopedale that Draper Corp. would always be there, would always be willing to lend its considerable resources to the town in an emergency, he says.
“Now there’s no Draper, there’s no Rockwell to fall back on,” he says.
The town was so well off under Draper’s “dictatorship” during the Depression, that it refused to participate in any economic recovery programs run by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, Hayes says.
After the plant closed in 1979, it was a different story. Hopedale sought government aid then, to make up for the lost tax revenue.
The economic picture for the town looked bad back then, but hidden in the background was a new opportunity – the large land tracts held by the Draper company were sold off to developers who began to build new homes.
The town’s era of new development started off with developer Greg Burrill’s 220-unit condominium complex, Laurelwood. Construction is still underway on the complex which is conservatively valued at $18 million.
Also under construction in Hopedale is Pinecrest, a 189-home subdivision; Adin Estates, a luxury 20-home development; and the 20-home Neck Hill Estates. More building plans are in the works.
New construction this year will add about $6 million of taxable property to Hopedale’s tax rolls, according to Tax Assessor Robert Ambrogi. Next year, he expects new construction to add another $10 million in taxable property.
It’s good news and it means a bit more flexibility for town officials as far as municipal spending goes, says Hayes. For the first time since 1979, selectmen have enough cash to set some aside in the tax stabilization fund, says Hayes.
But Assessor Gene Phillips says the current rate of development can’t last, and that the town can’t count forever on a continuously increasing tax base. Phillips warns that Hopedale is in for only a few good years, five to 10 at most, before it runs out of space for new buildings. After that, “There is no place in town where we can add new construction. Once the new construction is over with, the elastic (municipal) budget is gone too,” he says.
Then it’s back to belt-tightening tactics of the past six years, according to Phillips.
Hopedale News – April 2000
Hopedale News – April 1975
Hopedale News – April 1925
