Gasoline Alley Foundation transfers Albany Street properties to Frank Roberts, setting the stage for an integrated living, learning, business and recreation district in Springfield's McKnight neighborhood
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. — The Gasoline Alley Foundation announced today the sale of its Albany Street properties to Frank Roberts, a fourth-generation Springfield energy entrepreneur and president of Brown Bear Energy on Gasoline Alley.
“Frank Roberts understands legacy and can see the future,” said Joe Sibilia, founder and president of the Foundation. “Connecting his property with ours will speed up the process of connecting the rail trail, park and McKnight neighborhood, creating a fully integrated living, learning, business and recreation district.”
“The transaction went smoothly, and Mitch Bolotin was critical in keeping the deal on track and fair for both sides,” Sibilia added.
"What Joe did on Gasoline Alley was way ahead of his time and his creation was transformative for the City of Springfield, and Joe believed Frank was best suited to carry on that legacy," said Mitch Bolotin of Region Commercial. Region represented the seller in the transaction.
For nearly four decades, The Gasoline Alley Foundation has occupied a singular place in Springfield's civic life — part business incubator, part community gathering ground, part youth training center and urban garden, built around a two-block stretch of Albany Street that had long served as a dumping ground in the shadow of more than a million gallons of stored fuel.
The street earned its nickname generations ago, when the area was lined with fuel terminals and depots. The tanks remain today. It is a fitting irony that the neighborhood's next chapter is being written around clean, sustainable and regenerative business practices.
Since 1985, the Foundation has incubated more than 100 companies, trained over 1,000 neighborhood young people for jobs, planted hundreds of trees and plants in a once-desolate industrial corridor, and created a stable home for small business and the arts.
