Melissa Bailey Photo
“That’s a monster!” one man exclaimed, as a trio of prospective developers edged closer to a hot water heater in the basement of East Rock’s abandoned century-old school.
The trio was deep in the basement of 45 Nash St., which was built in 1888 to house the Lovell Elementary School and more recently has been used for several public schools. The building was left empty last summer after the city quietly shut down the CT Scholars program, an offshoot of Wilbur Cross High School that had been holding classes there.
The city is now trying to sell the brick schoolhouse before the fiscal year ends on June 30 to help plug an $8 million budget gap. The three-story, 27,768-square-foot building is assessed at just shy of $1 million, but needs a new roof.
The city has put out a Request For Proposals for a developer to buy the building and convert it into apartments or condos. Interested parties were invited to walk through the building Wednesday, less than two weeks before bids are due on Jan. 18. (Click here to read the RFP.)
As it did with the Coliseum lot and 360 State St., the city aims to set up an ad hoc advisory committee to recommend which proposal to choose after the bids come in.
Local preservationist Alek Juskevice joined estimator Jonathan Prete and structural engineer Javed Choundhry of A. Prete Construction (from left in top photo) in the basement boiler room. Juskevice pulled out his mini Maglite flashlight for backup as they squinted at the writing on the cast iron, oil-fired “monster.” They determined it was made in 1992 — not even 20 years old.
Juskevice determined they could keep the boiler, as long as they add a system by which prospective tenants could control their own heat.
He and local developer Fernando Pastor of SEEDnh are teaming up to seek to renovate the building into apartments. It’s their latest in a series of efforts to rehab and preserve historic buildings around town.
The boiler was one of many things they determined would be worth keeping, as they walked through the museum of artifacts from the past century of schools.
Pastor and Juskevice were two of 10 people who visited the site during its second open house Wednesday morning. Another 20 people visited the site on an earlier walkthrough. The 0.6 acre site is zoned RM2, high-middle density residential, which calls for no more than 22 housing units per acre. In its RFP, the city asks for proposals to “redevelop the site to residential rental or [a] condominium project” while preserving historic details.
Visitors who stretched tape-measures across the rooms Wednesday found about 13 natural spaces for apartments or condos: 12 classrooms on the three top floors and one in the basement.
“This is very easy — each one of these is an apartment,” declared Pastor as he walked through the classrooms with four members of his team.
One room held a mural depicting the city’s Green, harbor and iconic East and West rocks.
“This is a beautiful apartment,” remarked Pastor (at left in photo with Prete). Pastor asserted that he could keep the mural on the wall; someone would enjoy it. Others begged to differ.
As they walked through, they discussed what to do with asbestos that was inevitably lurking beneath the ceilings and floors, and what to do with the lead paint on the tin ceilings.
The building’s foundation and brick exterior look strong, Juskevice said. He said he found no vertical cracks that would indicate otherwise.
Inside, Juskevice et al encountered a number of artifacts. Some appeared frozen in time on the last day of school in June, when CT Scholars shut down. Others stretched farther back in time.
End-of-year messages, photos and banners remain on the blackboards and in the hallways. Before CT Scholars, the building was home to Cross Annex and the High School in the Community.
Red and green LifeStyles condoms lie scattered in a closet with computer equipment. The Board of Education plans to clear out whatever was left behind in the building.
Two mugs and a hand-crank pencil sharpener hang on the wall in the office of former CT Scholars director Judy Puglisi.
A piece of fabric remains tacked over the window in the door leading into an upper-floor classroom.
Classrooms feature old-style thermostats (at left in photo), where teachers swing a lever to open cool or hot air vents. Turn the lights on in the third-floor by pushing down a pin on this light switch (pictured).
Juskevice said that’s just the type of detail he’d like to keep if his group wins the bid to rehab the school.
“It’s a beautiful building,” he said. “It has so much potential.”
In a school corridor, he ran into Steve Inglese, an East Rocker who runs a commercial real estate company from Willow Street offices. Inglese said he was considering whether to turn the building into apartments or condos. Given the building’s size, he said, a developer would want to get more than a dozen units out of it.
Still, he predicted “there’s going to be a lot of interest” in the bid.
“It’s going to be a great use for the neighborhood,” he said.
This building would make excellent condos.
The city should be able to get a good price for it, given that housing prices in East Rock remain high. However, funds received should be used to improve the surrounding areas, not just simply to plug a general citywide budget gap.
Some of the funds received from this should be used towards reducing traffic impacts in the surrounding neighborhood, such as fixing that enormous expanse of asphalt at State & East, or the intersections in Cedar Hill. They could also be put towards improvements on and around adjacent Mechanic Street, which could help lure a developer to finally take on the derelict Star Supply Building (which is an even larger, and more significant, property).