City Plans To Sell MLK School To Amistad

Brian Straub probed the soil for traces of petroleum, as Achievement First laid the groundwork to build a $35 million charter high school on abandoned city property in Newhallville.

Straub (pictured), a staff scientist at ALTA Environmental Corp., probed the soil Thursday at the site of the former Martin Luther King Elementary School at 580 Dixwell Ave., a concrete bunker on the city’s surplus list.

Mayor John DeStefano has signed a letter of intent to sell the building to the Achievement First charter network. The letter helped the charter group snag state approval for a $35 million high school construction project.

The city is banking on bringing in $1.5 million by selling the property, according to the new budget approved in May. The school, which has been closed for two years, most recently housed the Urban Youth Middle School, a transitional program for troubled kids.

Achievement First plans to tear down the former MLK school to build a new home for Achievement First Amistad High School, a public charter school that serves 238 New Haven and Bridgeport kids on Prince Street.

“We’ve been busting at the seams” at the Prince Street site, said Achievement First spokesman Mel Ochoa.

The charter group won approval from the state legislature last month for the $35 million project. The state would pay $24 million, and Achievement First would pay for the rest, according to Ochoa.

The parties have not settled on a price, according to Ochoa. If they come to an agreement, the sale would still need approval from the school board and Board of Aldermen.

Ochoa said Achievement First intends to make the new school a community resource, allowing public access to fields, gyms and meeting spaces, as it did when it moved into the former Dwight School. Unlike in Dwight, there are no plans for neighborhood preference for students: The school is intended to serve three feeder middle schools run by Achievement First: Amistad Academy and Elm City College Prep in New Haven and Achievement First Bridgeport Academy Middle School. 

Newhallville Alderwoman Brenda Foskey-Cyrus said she welcomes the school into her district.

“I feel it’s a great thing to bring into the neighborhood,” she said. ​“When you look at that school and how long it’s been an eyesore.”

The school district had originally eyed the site as a permanent home for the Hyde Leadership School, a magnet high school housed in a swing space in Hamden. The mayor opted instead to move the project next to Hillhouse High School — then abandoned that plan amid neighborhood outcry and rejection by the Board of Aldermen.

After aldermen dropped the Hyde construction project from next year’s city budget, sending the school district back to the drawing board, some talk reemerged about returning to the idea of using the MLK school for Hyde, DeStefano said Thursday.

However, by that point DeStefano had already agreed to sell the property to Achievement First.

He issued his support for Achievement First in an April 30 letter to CEO Dacia Toll.

The letter states the city’s intent to negotiate a price with Achievement First, then sell the property with approval from the school board and Board of Aldermen.

“While the timetable for this process cannot be predicted with absolute certainty, the City is interested in working with you to complete this process as soon as practicable,” DeStefano’s letter reads.

DeStefano pledges that while the city seeks aldermanic approval for the deal, the city will negotiate ​“exclusively” with Achievement First.

DeStefano said Thursday that after the Hyde proposal fell through, he discussed whether to use the MLK site for Hyde. He said he decided it’s best to move forward with selling the MLK school to the charter group, while a new school-based construction committee goes through the site selection process for Hyde.

“Let’s follow through with Achievement First,” he determined. 

The 1968 bunker was one of the few buildings that got passed by in the mayor’s $1.5 billion school rebuilding project. The portraits of black leaders painted on its brick facade make it a landmark in the Newhallville neighborhood. The property, a 24,000-square-foot building on 5.6 acres of land, was appraised at $2.9 million in fair market value during the last revaluation.

Before negotiating a price, Achievement First has been scoping out the property. The charter group has completed two appraisals and is currently ​“working on environmental due diligence,” spokesman Ochoa said.

That quest brought scientist Brian Straub to the school Thursday afternoon for the second day in a row. He said he was conducting Phase II of his environmental study, examining soil and groundwater in ​“areas of concern.” That includes the corner lot at Dixwell and Ford, which he said was the site of an old gas station from the 1920s to 1950s. The fuel tanks have been removed, he said, but that doesn’t mean the contamination is gone.

Along with two men from the Massachusetts-based Haz-Probe, Inc., he drilled into the ground to extract soil from that area. Wearing purple plastic gloves and a Batman T‑shirt, he cut open plastic tubes of soil on a work bench at the side of the school. Straub said he would screen the soil samples for traces of petroleum, then send them off to a state-certified lab.

Then he took out a tripod and set about charting the lay of the land. He screwed a Total Station onto the tripod, and sent his helpers out across the field to survey the area. (The men from Haz-Probe identified themselves only as ​“young muscle.”) Straub said he had drilled wells into the ground to reach the well water. By the end of the day, he would have a ​“ground water contour map” to chart which direction the water — and any potential pollution — is flowing under the ground.

As the crew worked, Chris Casillo (pictured) set about marking utility lines under the ground. He ran a light current through the power line to the school, then used color-coded spray paint, delivered through a “marking wand,” to show Straub and co. where not to dig. Castillo said he works for On Target, a subcontractor hired by AT&T and Comcast to respond to people who abide by the directive “Call Before You Dig.”

While the environmental crew does its work, Achievement First is moving forward with drawing up plans for the building. The organization has issued a request for qualifications for architectural services. The RFQ was publicly noticed in the newspaper, and bids are due back next Wednesday, according to Ochoa.

Ochoa said if all goes well, the new Amistad High School will be open in the summer of 2014, in time to accept students. The school would serve about 450, which would be just big enough to serve its feeder schools. Amistad High, which was founded in 2006 with only 9th graders, has graduated only three classes of seniors so far. Those students who made it to 12th grade had 100 percent acceptance rates to four-year colleges and universities, according to Ochoa.

The school has bounced around the city over the years, housed at various times on Greene Street, in Science Park, and on Prince Street. Ochoa said the charter group has been looking for the past year for a permanent home.

Alderwoman Foskey-Cyrus said she’s glad the charter group chose her neighborhood.

She said she looks forward to neighbors getting access to a new gym, fields and meeting space, as well as jobs—inside the school and on the construction site.

She said she plans to hold neighborhood meetings along with Achievement First as the project moves forward.

“I feel that it’s a project that will not only educate our children, it will also help our community quite a bit,” she said.