The Selectmen’s meeting Monday evening displayed the continuing contortions that town officials are willing to go through to provide the appearance that they are trying to find a solution to the multitude of problems posed by the Eliopoulos development behind Center Fire Station. Of course the real solution would be to recover the Village Green through a rectification of the fraud and violations of due process that have allowed this priceless historical site to slip through our fingers.

But instead, the town’s Permanent Buildings Committee has joined the Town Manager in pretending that it makes sense to build a new fire station rather than simply shuttering or refurbishing the existing one. Interestingly enough, the town’s own study committees have shown that refurbishment is a feasible and desirable option that would cost less than a million dollars at this point. All the town would have to do at this point would be to demand the Board of Selectmen to vote to enforce the Preservation Restriction and uphold the law by joining in Dick McClure’s lawsuit against Epsilon, LLC at no cost to the town. Yet your BOS steadfastly refuses to uphold the law.

Instead, they are paying the unethical law firm of Kopelman & Paige (who was paid by an Eliopoulos-controlled Board of Selectmen for 12 years) to fight against the McClure lawsuit on behalf of the developer! This is the same law firm that advised (falsely) the Board of Selectmen that the Town would have to pay millions in damages to Epsilon if they voted to enforce the Preservation Restriction. The selectmen are aware that Kopelman & Paige lawyers have lied to them and are violating professional ethics, but they continue to pay them for services with our tax dollars.

Why were town officials discussing at the BOS meeting on Monday taking some of the land owned by St. Mary’s Church by eminent domain, but not any of the land around the current fire station? Why is the town is so secretive about what happened with the Eliopoulos land deal and not allowing people to testify about what went on? If they have done no wrong, then why are they not being transparent and honest with the people they serve? Instead of running away from the issue, they should have no fear of disclosing what has transpired.

Below is a new article from the Lowell Sun which, while valuable, propagates lies and misinformation through the usual quotes from Phil Eliopoulos and Paul Cohen. It’s unfortunate that the Sun continually provides these two men with a platform for their disinformation campaign. Corrections and correct contextual information are inserted in green.

North Road battle heads to Land Court on Thursday

By Rita Savard, rsavard@lowellsun.com
Updated:01/25/2011 06:41:22 AM EST

CHELMSFORD – A legal battle over the construction of an office building on North Road is headed to state Land Court Thursday as town lawyers try to quash subpoenas for several Chelmsford officials.

Attorney Richard McClure, who is suing the town for approving the construction of a two-story office building at 9 North Road, subpoenaed six town officials for deposition statements – Selectmen Chairman George Dixon, Selectman Eric Dahlberg, former Selectman Clare Jeannotte, Planning Board members George Zaharoolis and Jim Lane, and Permanent Building Committee co-Chair Pat Maloney.

McClure said questioning the officials is crucial in proving the land was transferred in an alleged back-room deal, at a loss to the town's taxpayers. But Chelmsford attorney Philip Eliopoulos, a former selectman whose family is building on the land, has also joined in the motion to halt the process, saying the deposition hearings are merely another attempt by McClure to harass the town.

"A judge has already said he didn't believe the case had merit," Eliopoulos said. "These depositions are not being conducted for evidence to support McClure's allegations and complaints. He is using the whole process to try and embarrass people who volunteer their time to serve the town, and it's sad."

No judge has said that the case doesn’t have merit; in fact, Judge Piper has said the defendant continues with construction “at his own peril.” This is Eliopoulos propaganda, similar to his previous statements misleading the press regarding his role in acquiring the property in the first place. The judge’s concerns center around the legal technicality of “standing,” not the merits of the case. In fact, there is a strong case against Eliopoulos, but town officials (most notably Paul Cohen and the BOS) are refusing to uphold the law and join any lawsuit on behalf of us, the residents of the town. That would provide standing that no judge could rule against, and formal inquiry could proceed. But your BOS refuses to even consider the notion; they act as though they are scared to death of being deposed and are utilizing any means to prevent their testimony. If former Selectmen are to be “embarrassed” by their testimony, that is no fault of Mr. McClure.

Eastern Bank owned the North Road parcel, which it sold to Michael Eliopoulos, Philip Eliopoulos' father, for $400,000 in 2009.

The correct purchase price is $480,000.

McClure argues the town could have acquired the land, but officials never made news of the land's availability public so Michael Eliopoulos' family could seal the deal. Philip Eliopoulos was on the Board of Selectmen at the time.

The Eliopoulos family and Town Manager Paul Cohen have denied the accusations.

Philip Eliopoulos said his father inquired about purchasing the land from previous owners, Mass Bank. But that bank was not willing to sell. As soon as Eastern Bank moved in, Michael Eliopoulos asked again about buying the parcel, and the new owners agreed to sell.

On Jan. 7, McClure questioned Thomas Dunn, a senior vice president at Eastern Bank. The entire deposition can be viewed on the town's website at www.townofchelmsford.us/whats-happening.cfm.

Dunn said he didn't offer the land to the town but that he did contact Cohen to see if the town had any interest in the parcel.

Dunn didn’t offer the land but contacted Cohen to see if the town wanted the land? Does that make sense to you? Of course he was ready to offer the land to the town, and said so, multiple times, in the deposition.

Cohen said he'd get the news to the Board of Selectmen, which he did during an executive session, but there was no real interest to purchase the whole parcel. The bank, Cohen added, wasn't willing to carve up the land.

This is the latest Big Lie from Cohen, that he discussed the issue with the selectmen. According to Cohen’s own statements, he waited over a month to even mention the issue to any selectmen. But even that doesn’t hold water. Multiple selectmen have stated they have no recollection of Cohen ever discussing the matter with them. And Cohen has unfortunately misplaced any meeting minutes that would support his claim.

All news reports quoting Cohen also ignore the fact that Dunn testified that when he finally did get through to Cohen, Cohen only expressed interest in acquiring 9 parking spaces; not the 1+ acre behind the station and separate from the Emerson House lot. Dunn was NOT interested in dividing the parcel for 9 parking spaces, but he did testify he would have split off the 1+ acre lot had the town shown financial interest.

Eastern Bank official Tom Dunn’s deposition shows unequivocally that all options were on the table. But even if the bank ultimately didn’t want to carve up the land – an option that Cohen never pursued, despite his subsequent lies to the press and to the Board of Selectmen – the entire parcel was clearly available for $480,000. The majority of that value was allocated to the Emerson House, which could have been sold off by the town at will, leaving a net cost for the land of something on the order of $100,000 or less. After all, the bank viewed the land as unbuildable – as we all did – due to the Preservation Restriction.

Now Cohen and town officials like Pat Maloney and the Board of Selectmen are claiming that they are doing “due diligence” by exploring options to buy a location for a new fire station at prices of $650,000 to $1,000,000 or more. They are not doing due diligence. Due diligence would be pursuing legal action to enforce the law, vacate the fraudulent Eliopoulos deal, and simultaneously remove the need to move the fire station and save the historic Village Green, intended to be a public park and conservation area. Where were their concerns for due diligence when Phil Eliopoulos was competing for the same property?

Cohen said Dunn's deposition disproved previous claims from critics like Chelmsford resident Roland Van Liew, who said Cohen was offered the land for free but turned it down.

This is a repeatedly effective gambit by Cohen. I have nothing to do with the lawsuit that is the subject of this article, but Cohen has no answers to the charges in the lawsuit. So he turns to this red herring of whether or not he was offered the land “for free,” and dropping my name as the source rather than the intermediary who actually presented that option to him. I have pointed out, and will continue to point out, that Cohen most certainly was offered, through an intermediary, the opportunity to pursue the property at no cost in exchange for tax abatements. It is a fact that Cohen never followed up on his knowledge of that possibility. The Dunn deposition supports this fact!

But regardless of whether a deal could have been structured with no cash payment, the fact is that the town’s land acquisition fund had – and still has – enough money in it to structure a deal. The fund had over $400,000 in it, but Cohen didn’t pursue discussions with the bank and certainly didn’t brief the Board of Selectmen. Nor did he report Phil Eliopoulos’ obvious ethics violations to the state Ethics Commission as required under the Chelmsford bylaws. He calls this “acting appropriately.” The Board of Selectmen chooses not to investigate, in fact they recently gave him a raise.

McClure said the deposition proves town officials knew about an opportunity to obtain the parcel but let it slip through their fingers to benefit a colleague.

"Besides the direct abutters, people in town never received notice this (office building) was supposed to be built on a piece of property with a preservation restriction that everyone had an interest in," McClure said. "I think the depositions will make it blatantly clear that Philip Eliopoulos called in favors, that instead of getting a gold watch for his retirement, he got a piece of town-owned land."

Cohen went on to keep his mouth shut about the Eliopoulos deal for an additional 6 months. The rest we all know: town boards, led by Eliopoulos cronies, provided waiver after waiver, special permit after special permit, culminating with an unlawful building permit from Cohen’s direct report, the town’s Building Inspector.

Why are former Selectmen and Planning Board members fighting so hard to keep their depositions from being taken? The answer is patently obvious; they know their depositions will expose malfeasance by both Phil Eliopoulos and Paul Cohen.

The two-story, 15,494-square-foot office building, which will eventually house medical, dental and law offices for the Eliopoulos family, first spurred lawsuits from local dentist Michael Sargent, whose practice abuts the property.

Sargent filed suit with three town boards over an alleged violation of a 1978 preservation restriction, which he said was created to retain the two-acre parcel as open space. Former Selectmen John Carson, Paul Hart and Joe Shanahan, who helped author the preservation restriction more than 30 years ago, spoke before town officials last year to confirm the intent of the bylaw was to keep the land as open space.

Following a packed public hearing in August, selectmen agreed that the project didn't violate the preservation restriction, and Sargent dropped his lawsuit. But McClure picked up where Sargent left off.

Dick McClure is not “picking up where Sargent left off.” Mike Sargent was trying to enforce the Preservation Restriction. It’s a farce that we can’t, as residents, enforce the Preservation Restriction that designates us as the grantees of its benefits, but that’s the law. Mr. McClure’s lawsuit is pursuing violations of proper notice, due process and is investigating evidence of fraud, very different issues.

The Eliopoulos developers and the Board of Selectmen cannot fight the suit on its merits, so they are allied in fighting the suit on the basis of lack of standing of the plaintiff (Dick McClure). A legal nicety demands that a potential plaintiff suffer different damages than the population at large. The fact that all of us are suffering damages due to this project makes it hard to establish that! So the Eliopoulos clan is using the fact that we all are losing out, to keep any one specific person from suing!

An attempt to halt construction last year was rejected by a state Land Court judge. Motions to dismiss McClure's case and to quash the subpoenas will be heard Thursday in the Massachusetts Land Court at 3 Pemberton Square, Boston.

We will do our best to keep you apprised of important new developments as they occur.

Yours with best wishes and hope for the future of our town,

Roland Van Liew