Gloucester Daily Times
http://www.gloucestertimes.com/
Published: February 22, 2008 12:23 am
Gloucester: Kirk wants to cut red tape to ease surplus school sale
Maplewood: School may be sold as artist studios
By Richard Gaines
Staff writer
Mayor Carolyn Kirk thinks she's identified the flaw that has frustrated city attempts over the past five years to sell off the Maplewood School building for development
A fourth attempt to liquidate the property — again by putting it on the market and hoping for a risk-taker to claim it at auction, then work through the neighborhood concerns and permitting process — has been aborted.
Instead, Kirk has decided to work through neighborhood concerns and permitting first, then offer it to the highest bidder free of "red tape."
According to the plan, the product of the process would be a 27,400 square foot shell, two stories and a basement of brick classrooms, ready for adaptation into 10 apartments, which might be reserved to be the home and studio space of artists.
The City Council would need to buy the concept, but Ward 3 Councilor Steve Curcuru, who serves the Maplewood neighborhood, yesterday said he liked the idea.
"I'm encouraged she's going in this direction," Curcuru said.
Kirk said she was introduced to the concept by John Dugger, an architect and chairman of the Community Housing Coalition. She said he pointed out the problem with the city's efforts during a general discussion of housing policy.
Dugger could not be reached for comment.
It is his analysis, contained in a Feb. 14 letter to Kirk, that "the largest impediment ... to realizing full value for surplus properties is the speculative nature of the approvals process."
Offering the school without permits, in "as is" condition, as the city has, requires the buyer to navigate the iffy approvals process and reach an accord with the abutters over the redevelopment.
Three different would-be redevelopers were beaten into submission by the daunting challenges of satisfying the neighbors, the Zoning Board of Appeals and the Historical Commission, which considers the 1899 structure worth preserving.
"The recent history of the Maplewood School is an excellent example of a project doomed by the approvals process," Dugger wrote. "In today's market, the developer can't afford to pay carrying costs for years awaiting approvals."
Moreover, Dugger wrote, "It is not the developer's job to solve social issues," such as neighborhood concerns and deciding what to do with the property.
"The objective of the sale of the school is to raise badly needed funds for the city," he wrote.
The price sought for the Maplewood Avenue building and its smallish lot — 25,000 square feet with little parking, close to private homes on four sides — has not been set. The property, a "bit of a white elephant," in the words of Ward 1 Councilor Jason Grow, is assessed at $1.1 million.
But a 2004 sale for $715,000 to a team of builders intending to rehab it into 30 condos collapsed in the face of abutter opposition.
Last year, two other developers, who one after another claimed it at auction for less than half that amount, fell away before tackling permitting.
The city's offering at auction required the replacement of the building with duplexes.
The first of these would-be developers had wanted to preserve the building and the second depended on a city subsidy. When the Historical Commission indicated its determination to save the school, the second developer, a nonprofit firm from Newburyport, gave up.
Dugger noted a building cleared of permitting hurdles and neighborhood opposition should be more valuable to a developer.
The initial impetus for selling the building was to restore the stabilization fund. The fund had been reduced during the recession by repeated charges to augment the operating budget.
Once at $2.8 million, the fund today holds $1.5 million, too little, according to Moody's, the bond rating agency. Last summer, Moody's decided against downgrading the rating of Gloucester bonds but challenged the city to rebuild its reserves.
Gloucester purchasing agent Everett Brown notified the council's Budget and Finance Committee of Kirk's decision to abort the "as is" sale of the school, which was organized in the closing weeks of the Mayor John Bell's term.
Brown said Kirk's interest in reserving the old school for artists' living and working space was piqued by North Adams Mayor John Barrett III, who spoke to the annual meeting of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts in January.
He encouraged Kirk to make room for the city's artists and said doing so in his city had helped fuel its recovery from economic doldrums.
Kirk told the Times that Dugger's analysis of the situation would lead to a decision on whether to offer the building with permits for general use or reserve it for artists.
Curcuru said he would ensure the abutters were involved in all decisions on the disposal of the former neighborhood school, which was built in the days before automobiles and so was not designed with parking.
Concern about the vehicles of condo residents was cited by neighbors who sued to stop the original proposal for 30 condos.
Richard Gaines can be reached at rgaines@gloucestertimes.com.