Louis Mayer accumulated his first $1 million buying and selling scrap metal in Chelsea, Massachusetts, then left to try his hand at film-making in Hollywood. Yes, THAT Louis Mayer, of Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM).

If Louis Mayer can make it, so can his home town. That’s the outlook in Chelsea, a Boston satellite city of scrapyards, oil tanks, warehouses and factories, with a lurid history of unparalleled political corruption, and a new story of unbridled optimism and determination.

The corruption is behind them, say officials of the only city in Massachusetts to go into state receivership since the Great Depression, bankrupted by its own corruption. Chelsea’s democratic processes were suspended from 1991 to 1995, and the city was run by a state-appointed receiver, who slashed budgets and bureaucracies. The citizens recalled the mayor, adopted a new charter that changed the government from a powerful elected mayor/council to an elected council and appointed city manager system.

Now, says Jay Ash, director of planning and development (617-889-8230), it’s time to clean up the city itself, and indications are that developers and investors agree wholeheartedly. Chelsea’s first office tower, a 10-story building of 170,000 square feet with another 170,000 square feet of structured parking, got through the permitting process in 81 days under the "new pro-development" attitude, says Ash, boasting that the city has had unanimous council decisions for two years running.

"We have exclusive listings with the owners, the price is right, and we’re looking to invite retail people and co-developers into the project." said Gil Starble, Business Development Manager of Pro-Vest Capital Corp. Investors are waiting to get a piece of this project, Starble said, including two bankers and an advisor to a pension fund, and Pro-Vest Capital is inviting retail, residential, specialty and entertainment developers to "take advantage of an open opportunity."

The residential target market inludes young professionals, commuters, traveling professionals who want airport proximity, 55-plus empty nesters, telecommuters, home-based entrepreneurs, and wealthy individuals seeking water views at value pricing, according to Starble.

One of the property owners on the site told E.S.P. the view of Boston Harbor from the top of his four-story warehouse is spectacular. Starble says one of the buildings planned for the site will be 15 stories tall. All existing buildings on the site would be demolished.

The project architect is Miroslav Radoynovski, whose firm handled all the planning and engineering for the construction of four elementary schools, two middle schools and one high school in Chelsea, a $115 million educational renewal project begun in 1989 when Boston University took over management of the crumbling school system, which had not built a new school in 90 years.

Demographics for Chelsea itself are not stellar. It is a town of 1.8 square miles and 28,000 people, many of them recent immigrants. In the school system, 33 percent of students move in or out of the system annually and 85 percent receive lunch subsidies. More than 66 percent come from homes in which the primary language is not English. On the other hand, the city is bracketed by Boston to the south and a massive high-tech office zone to the north, where companies feed off the brain power of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. New office and hotel construction ­ actual or proposed ­ around the site amounts to nearly 700,000 square feet. The site is on the edge of the Urban Renewal District, and adjacent to it is a low- to moderate-income neighborhood that is mostly owner-occupied housing, according to Starble.

Chelsea is two miles from "the big dig," a $15 billion to $17 billion tunnel from Boston to Logan Airport. Massport owns Chelsea’s waterfront, which is dominated by rusting oil storage tanks, and is planning a redevelopment there.

Houston-based Wedge Hotels Corp., the firm destined to build the proposed Hilton, has been eyeing Chelsea for some time. Ron Evans, Wedge president and CEO, was quoted in 1997 by the Boston Business Journal: "We own a 150-room Days Inn in Saugus, and we know what the hotel market is like in Boston. That hotel is on Route 1, seven miles away from Logan Airport, and its occupancy rate is 80 percent. When I saw this (Chelsea) site, also on Route 1 but only two miles from the airport, cash registers started ringing."

Chelsea, as an Economic Target Area (ETA), is permitted to establish Economic Opportunity Areas (EOAs) in which qualifying business investments can become Certified Projects. To qualify, the business investment must be tied to new jobs being created in the state. A company pledging to add jobs as it opens or expands can then become eligible for reduced property taxes on the local level and a one-time, 5% state income tax credit based upon the amount of the new investment, less soft costs. Additionally, a one-time, 10% state income tax deduction is available for certain investments made in a vacant property.

Certified Projects require both local City Council and EACC approval. To assure qualifying businesses of Chelsea’s commitment to partner with them in making investments and growing the local employment base, the Chelsea City Council has pre-approved a tax relief formula and authorized Ash to coordinate business activity relative to TIRE. The pre-approved formula is meant to serve as a guideline to determine the level of property tax relief a project is granted, and is based upon the amount of investment being made, the number of jobs being created and retained and several other components.

Fontanills is a futures, options and stock market investor who has over the years developed numerous computer based trading systems and written several books on trading. He is the developer of two seminar series in the areas of stock and commodity trading, including the Optionetics Workshop (see http://www.optionetics.com). He specializes in futures trading, options trading on index options and options on futures. He is a consultant to a number of off-shore trading organizations including trading firms and financial institutions. He is the author of a number of publications including; "Optionetics, The Science of Low Stress/High Profit Trading, Interactive Trading," "The Future of Trading," "The Market Insider Series" and the "Optionetics Monthly ‘Hotletter.’"