With each passing day, more light is shed on the now infamous 2001 agreement calling for the City of Lowell to sell the property that would become its Senior Center to local developers, who in turn would sell the building back to the city after 20-years.

The initial narrative circulating on social media was that a building now belonging to Lowell was again being handed over to the same developers, along with a new, sweetheart 15-year lease to further enrich those individuals.

The reaction from many, justifiably so, was one of anger at the “greedy” developers for reneging on a deal and “screwing” the city, with a significant amount of anger also directed at city officials past and present for continuing to enable the “injustice.”

Eventually, details and a counter narrative began to emerge, pointing to a situation far more gray than the solid black and white scenario many portrayed it as on social media.

First, we learned that one of the supposed “villainous” millionaire developers getting skewered by the local Marxists and “angry at their lot in life” keyboard warriors isn’t even a party to the modern day transactions.

I guess being an immigrant success story and founding two pharmaceutical companies that improved people’s quality of life, not to mention saving countless other lives, doesn’t matter much to those who can’t seem to launch a career of their own and may still be stuck on mommy and daddy’s health plan while also living in their basement.

Fortunately for Mr. Behrakis, notwithstanding the CCP funded protesters who’ve grown fond of standing on the Ladd and Whitney monument, and the usual heckling Muppets up in the balcony, most of us in Greater Lowell appreciate your too numerous to mention charitable contributions to the community. Rest assured, you have accomplished more in 30-seconds than they will in an entire lifetime of envy and misery.

Next we learned there are issues with the way the property deed was recorded, leading to the situation where ownership is now in dispute.

The legalities of that were the subject of an InsideLowell Daily Pulse podcast with a local Real Estate Attorney this past Thursday. If you social media barristers or real-life baristas would like to learn a little Real Estate Law without putting yourself $100,000 further into college debt, click here to check it out.

My assumption once the problems with the deed came into sharper focus was that the “mistakes” in crafting legal paperwork in 2001 were either a case of gross negligence, incompetence or corruption.

Enter Richard Howe, Jr., and his weekly Sunday Substack article.

(Editor’s Note: If your Sunday reading doesn’t include Gerry Nutter’s Sunday Notes, the Lowell Sun Column or Dick Howe, Jr’s Substack, you’re missing out on important local government info and context)

This past Sunday morning, the former Register of Deeds shed significant light on why the documents were likely drawn up the way they were, while also vouching for the competence of Lowell’s legal team at the time.

These snips are but a small sample of the in-depth analysis provided in his writing. I highly recommend you give it a read. It will provide a much better understanding of where things stood in 2001, and why they stand where they do today.

Can’t say for sure it will change your mind on whether the city should risk legal action and additional costs to definitively take ownership of the property, but you’ll at least be more informed on the situation and not dealing in a black and white reality of what is a far more complex matter.

Yours truly certainly is.

Which brings us to the part where I owe some folks an apology.

To those in the Solicitor’s Office in 2001, I apologize for questioning your competence. I, too, made the mistake of presenting the situation as cut and dried on recent InsideLowell podcasts.

I WAS WRONG and I AM SORRY!

Ditto to the ensuing City Managers, members of their administrations, Solicitors and City Councils for wondering if perhaps shady backroom politics led to the intentional filing of legal documents that paved the way for today’s squabbles.

It appears that all involved at the time were just trying to figure out the best way to approach a complex transaction.

That said, there’s still one unanswered question on my end; what transpired along that way that led Mr. Sarris to not honor, to this point, what seems a clear intent to gift the property back to the city after the initial 20-year lease expired?

Is it simply greed, as the wannabe Bolsheviks and others claim? Does he feel one of the City Managers or City Councils along the way failed to honor some part of the bargain we’re not currently aware of? Were heated words exchanged during the negotiating process that fueled resentment and a “screw them” mentality?

We may now have far more insight into the situation than we had two weeks ago, but there’s still an important piece of the informational puzzle missing.

What led to the handshake becoming a “talk to the hand?”

Meanwhile, the ball is still in a deadlocked city council’s court…for now.

Perhaps Sarris himself will initiate legal proceedings and the city will have no choice but to wage the legal battle some want to fight instead of accepting a deal that attempts to make the best of a bad situation.

Either way, the cost will ultimately be born by the taxpayers, for whom no good “deed” goes unpunished.