Council back to drawing board on Aldrich, Rhodes properties
City officials continue to look into how they can get the best deal possible for the former Aldrich Junior High School and the Christopher Rhodes Elementary School, both of which remain closed, unoccupied and up for sale by the city.
Both properties have received bids from prospective buyers – the International Charter School as a suitor to buy, renovate and re-purpose Aldrich for operation now based in Pawtucket, and local developer Hugh A. Fisher submitted a bid of $550,000 for the Christopher Rhodes School – but neither of those bids have been accepted by the Warwick City Council as of yet.
During Monday night’s council meeting, City Planning Director William Pasquale Jr. gave a report outlining four bids from potential appraisers to assess the value of the Christopher Rhodes property, as by local law the city would need to appraise the building before being eligible to sell it to a potential buyer, such as Fisher. The low bid for getting an appraisal came from Peter Scotti & Associates for $3,200.
However, finance committee chair and Ward 5 Councilman Ed Ladouceur put the brakes on the proposal to merely appraise Christopher Rhodes, suggesting an appraisal of both Aldrich and Rhodes together – as one combined parcel, which he argued might be attractive to a wider range of developers.
“It’s an interesting opportunity we have for both Christopher Rhodes and Aldrich,” Ladouceur said at the meeting. “We’re talking about a significant amount of property in totality between the two. I think we’re talking about an unknown total value of those. I personally am very curious about what those properties combined would generate in revenue.”
Ladouceur said in a follow-up interview on Wednesday that he imagined a large number of single family homes could potentially be built on the parcels – the total area comprises around 200,000 square feet – creating a large amount of potential tax revenue that was significant enough, in his opinion, to at least look into the feasibility of the idea.
“I need to be sure in my mind before I commit to something over there that we have explored all options and have done our due diligence on behalf of the payers in order to find the best deal possible,” he said.
The case could be made, as Pasquale did in response to Ladouceur, that doing another appraisal on Aldrich would be redundant, and that the city should instead focus on getting accurate numbers on what it would cost to abate and demolish Christopher Rhodes, as it is unlikely that the school could be re-purposed due to its age and condition.
“Then we’ll have the appraisal for Rhodes and then we’ll be able to determine the net value for the taxpayers,” he said, adding that a Phase 1 and Phase 2 appraisal of Christopher Rhodes would cost around $14,000. “Between that and the Aldrich appraisal, there will be a lot of information that we can go forward with.”
While Ladouceur agreed wholeheartedly that the city should get a good handle on how much it will cost to mitigate and raze the Christopher Rhodes building, he said on Wednesday that he doesn’t want to solely rely on the city’s appraisal of Aldrich – which concluded the property was worth about $2.2 million – and that he wants an “independent appraisal from someone outside of the community.”
“I don’t know if any of those [current] offers are real good, real bad or just okay, because we don’t have an outside independent appraisal,” he said.
The only offer for Aldrich that currently exists is from the International Charter School. That bid was received over the summer, and included a purchase price of $1.9 million for the building, in addition to $6.9 million in renovations they would make to the building. The school would open up their recreational facilities to the public during off-school hours and would pay $70,000 a year in PILOT [payment in lieu of taxes].
That bid has ultimately gone nowhere, though, as members of the council expressed doubts about how many kids would be taken away from the public school system, and how much that would ultimately cost the district. Further, some felt that getting less than the appraised value of the property was a bad deal.
Ladouceur said he doesn’t have anything against charter schools, as he is pro school choice, but he is wary of the school funding formula, and thinks that more options should be explored for Aldrich anyway.
“I need to see better numbers before I can sign onto anything,” he said. “Taxpayer dollars are not monopoly money. This is real money.”
The issue was ultimately tabled so that Pasquale could come back with a revised plan to appear with before the council in a couple of months.
