Northampton sure has been taking it on the chin lately. Maybe we have been throwing around our sophistication and prosperity too much. Maybe we are too liberal and effete for this rural county. First it was the Registry of Motor Vehicles office fleeing to Hadley, then all the “big boxes” bypassed Northampton and went to the Hadley megamalls. Now Kollmorgen might leave us, and the state has decided to take half of our courthouse’s business away and set up shop in a new courthouse headquartered, yes, in Hadley.

Every politician in the county has been hurling brickbats at the idea of a $2.5 million new building barely three miles from the existing county courthouse in Northampton. The local bar association called it “costly and disruptive,” Judges Michael Ryan and Lillian Miranda and Atty. Jonathan Souweine have gone on the record as opposing it. Even Judge Nancy Dusek-Gomez is saying maybe the project should be in Belchertown, where it was originally supposed to be. Its only defenders seem to be former State Rep. William Nagle, who started the ball rolling by inserting the $2.5 million into the House budget just before he left office, and Rep. Nancy Flavin, of Easthampton who picked up the ball and was the point woman who fought for the line item to be put in the current budget.

But maybe some of this is smoke, designed to enable politicians to distance themselves from an unpopular project. The storm seems to be dying down and progress continues on the project with the developers planning to break ground this summer.

The reasons that the state should not go ahead with this project are numerous and compelling, Its location is embarrassing , close to Northampton restaurants and the homes of law enforcement professionals, but distant from most of the towns in this new district, which includes Hadley, South Hadley, Amherst, Belchertown, Pelham, and Ware. The eastern part of the county is depressed economically and isolated from public transportation, and now a courthouse to serve its people is being built barely six tenths of a mile from the Northampton line. I clocked it myself.

And then there is the state’s financial crisis. The last I heard the state might lay off 44 percent of the Department of Transitional Assistance caseworkers in Holyoke, and 43 percent of the caseworkers in Springfield because of a $3 million shortfall. Hundreds of jobs might be saved if the people in Boston would take line item “A” and shift it over to column “C”. Then there’s the issue of taking business away from a Northampton courthouse that has cut its backlog in cases, and is doing 51 percent fewer jury trials than it did in l998. In addition, the old courthouse may be a lot emptier next year now that towns and cities in the county are considering not funding the regional council of governments now housed in the downtown court building. So what are the good reasons for going ahead?

Someone important stands to make money from it. When a project has strong legs, you should probably look around for the neighborhood elephant. The firm behind the Hadley courthouse deal - ROAM LLC - is one of a whole group of corporations managed by a Springfield real estate broker named Matthew McDonough. He and his partners are moving into Hampshire County real estate in a big way. His Gretna Greene Development Corp. bought the old Tri-County Sales building on Conz Street and converted it to medical offices in l997, and last year Middle Hampshire Development LLC bought both of the old Kaiser-Permanente buildings. The one at 70 Main St. in Florence went for $850,000, and the bigger building in Amherst for $2.75 million.

Peter Picknelly, president of Peter Pan Bus Lines, and the Picknelly family play a big role in some of these projects, and might have an indirect interest in them all, through McDonough Realty. Peter Picknelly’s lawyer, John C. Auth, is the treasurer of McDonough Realty Services Inc.

But in a telephone interview, Peter Picknelly attempted to distance himself from McDonough, denying he had any financial interest in McDonough’s operations.

Over the last four years, the Picknellys, through their various corporations, including the Sheraton, Falcon Holding Corp., and Monarch Place, have given over $18,500 to critical leadership figures in the Massachusetts House and Senate. Money buys clout and LLCs associated with Matthew McDonough or the Picknellys now own buildings that house many public agencies.

McDonough has two major projects going right now, the Hadley Courthouse and rehabbing a building in Greenfield for the Hampshire --Franklin District Attorney, Elizabeth Scheibel. And just the other day it was announced that Paul Picknelly, Peter’s son and president of the Sheraton hotel, is the visible partner in Monarch Enterprises LLC, which is slated to build a new regional $3 million dog-pound to serve the communities of Chicopee, Springfield, South Hadley and West Springfield.

A couple of months ago an Advocate article looked for answers (Why This Hadley Courthouse?) and pointed at corporate links between a publicly indentified partner in ROAM LLC, former DA candidate Edward J. Ryan, and his law partner Paul Boudreau. And, it should be noted, Boudreau is married to Hampshire-Franklin DA Scheibel. I talked to Scheibel about a month ago, and she was upset at the courthouse rumors that evidently led to the Advocate article, and vehemently denied being behind the Hadley project.

“So if it’s not Scheibel, who is pushing this?” I asked one old courthouse employee, who doesn’t want to go on the record. No one wants to go on the record on this poisonous issue with layoffs in the air because of budget cuts. We all have mortgages. “Oh look south, look to Springfield,” he said. “That’s where the power is. “

You can see the hills of Ware and the plains of Hadley in the distance from the 25th floor of Monarch Place. Peter Picknelly’s office and Matt McDonough’s office are up where the trade winds blow. Huge at the base, the floor plan in Monarch Place is cozier up on the 25th floor. Everything is silver and green with touches of gold. Coming out of the elevator, the first thing you see is a large sign on a free-standing wall: McDonough Realty Services (MRS). The officers of McDonough Realty are Picknelly’s lawyer, John Auth, and McDonough. Auth and McDonough have their offices at one end of the short corridor, on the other end is Peter Picknelly’s suite and the offices of the architect for most of these ventures, Bernard Schenkelberg. Everyone is close at hand, ready to be called into the inner sanctum.

When I was there and I asked for Mr. Picknelly, the receptionist went into the inner office and returned with the news that Mr. Picknelly had no comments on my questions about his ownership or involvement in the Hadley and Westfield courthouses, a South Hadley group home, and a Holyoke Juvenile facility. I should take all my questions to Matthew McDonough.

“So don’t get comfortable, because the answers I am going to give you, you won’t like” said McDonough. “I don’t have much to say to you.” He looks like some character that plays a lawyer on TV. Tough, bald, smallish and well-dressed, built like a small bull. His office is small and elegant, right on the edge of the glass cliff. I look out at the clouds, I look around for somewhere to sit down, but there isn’t anything available. What he says is no, no he isn’t going to say who the partners are in these ventures I am talking about.

“If they wanted to name their venture the John Doe LLC they would have.” he says. “The investors in these ventures want their confidentiality respected.”

A limited liability corporation is not like a normal corporation, where there are boards of directors, and you can go to the Secretary of State’s office in Boston and find out who the people running the corporation are, and get their annual reports. All that an organizer of an LLC has to file with the Secretary of State is a one-page declaration with the name of a manager of the LLC. The manager has to keep in his desk at work all the tax returns of the LLC , a list of investors (members) and the percentage that each investor has of the project. McDonough has all the information on his investors in his stylish desk, but he doesn’t have to open that drawer unless the director of the securities division of the Secretary of State’s office invokes chapter 156C:9 and asks him for the information.

McDonough is the guy on point for the deals, the only man who shows up on the computer screens in the courthouses. He does business for the Picknelly family, and he says some years they are his biggest clients, some years not. He says he is an independent rent-paying broker who finds deals for his clients, spots properties, and makes the winning bid. He does admit that the Picknellys were owners of one of the courthouses, and he was also an investor in that particular venture, which was the Westfield one.

1997/1998. The Holyoke Juvenile Court Facility

Construction Cost: $960,000.00
Architect: Bernard Schenkelberg
Builder: Marois Construction
Owner: Gretna Greene Development Corp.
Financing: Peoples Savings Bank

The first Peter Picknelly venture into courthouse construction that I am aware of was the juvenile court facility in Holyoke. He was the only bidder on the contract. On the last day of l996, he bought an old garage on Elm Street in downtown Holyoke, evicted School Time Inc., a privately owned school bus operation, and on April 18 of l997 sold the property to Gretna Greene Development Corp. His lawyer, John Auth, is the only officer of Gretna Greene, and Matt McDonough managed the project. According to the building permit, Gretna Greene put about $960,000 into the building, and the a spokesman for the State Judicial Court told me that the state pays Gretna Greene Development about $339,000 a year for their five-year lease on the facility.

2000/2001 Children’s Study Home, South Hadley

Cost: $500,000-$800,000
Architect: Bernard Schenkelberg
Builder: Marois Construction
Owner: Canal Street Development LLC
Financing: Peoples Savings Bank

South Hadley is the home turf of many of the people involved in these projects. Matt McDonough is on the town’s appropriation committee, Edward J. Ryan is the town counsel, George Boyle of Boyle Associates is the former town planner, and Joe Marois (probably the M in ROAM) is on the town’s industrial development committee.

In December of l999, the Daily Hampshire Gazette carried a story that the Children’s Study Home wanted to convert the old VFW post in South Hadley to a facility for young women in the custody of the State Department of Youth Services. Local residents got up in arms about the project, which would be owned by something called Canal Street Development LLC. (CSDLLC) and leased to the Children’s Study Home. Developer Matt McDonough of CSDLLC had a private meeting with the Town Administrator to talk about the project, something that stirred up more bad feelings.

The town planner, Richard Harris, thought there were zoning problems with the project, and went to see the town’s counsel, Edward Ryan, for a ruling. On Jan. 14, 2000, Ryan gave him a preliminary opinion that the educational nature of the McDonough project made it exempt from local zoning laws under Chapter 40A. On the 19th, Harris sent the ruling to planning board members. He notes “ I have been advised that Mr. Ryan does not have any business relationship with either the proposed developer or the Children’s Study Home. “

Some lawyers seem to have a habit of saying things that are literally true but substantively false. Maybe it is something they teach you in law school. Sure Ed Ryan was not partners with Matt McDonough in January of 2000, and was not associated with the Children’s Home, but he had a conflict and he should have said so. In March Ryan followed his initial letter with another formal ruling, and the town planner asked the Attorney General for a legal opinion, an opinion which the AG’s office declined to issue. In the end, the planning board voted 4 to 1 to approve the project. Members said they were afraid that the town would face a lawsuit if the project was blocked by the community. Ryan’s legal opinion effectively limited the town board’s options. Did his critical intervention lead McDonough to cut him as an investor in the Hadley project? We’ll probably never know unless someone gets an awful attack of truth-telling. Ryan denies it.

“Well, sure I know all these people,” said Ryan to me, “I know a lot of people in this town. I’ve worked here a long time. I had no reason to walk away. I thought this was a question where I could give a good reading of the law.” He says that it was “long afterward” that he asked McDonough to keep him in mind if he had any more projects. And McDonough came back and said yes, we got a project here.

Ryan had to know that Canal Street had links to Joe Marois. Ryan was Marois’ friend and long-term lawyer. He represented Marois in the organization of Community Self-Storage Inc. (July ,l999), Marois Construction Co. (Jan., l978), and Orion Farm Inc. (Nov., l997). There’s a whole nest of close business relationships between Ryan, who once unsuccesslfully sought the Democratic nomination forr district attorney and his partner, Paul Boudreau, spouse of the current DA, a Republican, and between them and John Auth and Michael J. Murphy, Picknelly’s lawyers.

Next: McDonough strikes again: Courthouses in Westfield and Hadley, and new offices for the District Attorney in Greenfield.