A New Future for Garden Street School?

Southeast Town Councilman Eric Larca has presented a concept to transform the former Garden Street Elementary School into a town and village municipal building, as well as community center.

By Holly Crocco

There’s no denying the former Garden Street Elementary School in Brewster holds a special place in the hearts of many village residents who either attended the school themselves, or whose children walked those halls.

However, since its closure in 2012 due to building deterioration, the once-beloved structure has sat vacant – the focus of many revitalization plans that have yet to come to fruition.

This doesn’t sit well with Southeast Town Councilman Eric Larca.

“Every town faces a moment where it needs to decide whether it wants to manage decline, or invest in its future,” he said at the Jan. 8 Southeast Town Board meeting, where he presented a concept of what could become of the “beloved longstanding asset in the community,” should the town decide to invest in its rehabilitation.

The project, he said, could possibly be done at no cost to taxpayers.

Larca, whose mother taught at Garden Street for 30 years, is asking the board to explore the idea of turning the building into an combined town/village hall and community center.

“We would re-center both governments and the community in a building that was designed for public use to begin with,” he said.

After its closure in 2012 by the Brewster School Board, Cedar House Capital went into contract with the district to develop the property, but after 18 months the contract expired. Cedar House Capital and the district then went back into contract and the sale went through in early 2020, just before the COVID pandemic hit.

“It has sat vacant and unimproved and untouched since that time,” said Larca, before laying out a conceptual proposal to change that.

The first element of the concept is co-location – bringing together town and village functions to one place, where the supervisor and mayor, clerks, courts, building departments, recreation departments, facilities departments, special districts, accounting departments, assessors, tax receivers, and village police could all cohabitate. The Southeast Museum could have space there, as well.

“I want to be very clear: this is not a takeover or a consolidation of government,” said Larca. “This is only co-location intended to make operations efficient and lead to cost savings.”

The second element of the concept is to provide a much-desired community and recreational center in town – one that could connect the Garden Street playground to Wells Park, and “which would more than double the amount of outdoor recreational space within the village today,” said Larca.

“Today, our parks are fragmented, irregularly shaped, and largely limited to baseball fields with little room for expansion,” he said. “Additionally, many people may not know that the town does not own Markel Park in the village. In fact, roughly half of each ball field is owned privately, the other half is leased.”

The building’s gymnasium could be refurbished to provide indoor recreational space, while classrooms could be transformed into various program rooms, and the property could house trails, open space, and – possibly in the future (when the budget allows) – a pool, dog park, and even a BMX or mountain biking trail.

The last piece of Larca’s proposed concept includes renting out unused space.

According to the councilman, the town only needs about 14,000 square feet of the 60,000-square-foot building for government operations, which leaves a substantial amount for other users and tenants, such as BOCES, local higher education programs, Putnam County record storage, Putnam and Southeast museum storage and programs, and other uses.

“A year, two years ago, BOCES signed a lease-letter of intent to rent the entire Garden Street building, but with (developer Joe Cotter’s) passing, that idea also fell apart,” said Larca.

He said the basement has about 9,500 square feet of space, and the top floor of the building has about 17,000 square feet of space for rental.

So, how much would all this cost?

Larca worked with a development company to come up with cost estimates. While the sale price of the building was not discussed at the recent meeting, as that is a matter that needs to be addressed in executive session, he said the project total was estimated at about $14 million.

“That includes white-boxing the whole building – basically going in and gutting it, getting it safe, and then also building out the municipal space for the town on the first floor, and doing all the mechanical upgrades that need to be done,” said Larca, who recommends using $2 million from the town’s reserves toward the project.

Admittedly, “that has some deeper implications that we’d have to worry about,” including some interest expense, he said.

The town would sell three of its municipal buildings – the planning board offices at 67 Main St., town building department offices at 1 Main St., and the current town hall building at 1360 Route 22 – for a total of about $1.3 million.

The remaining $10.7 million would be borrowed. Larca said it is believed the town could get a 25-year bond at 4 percent interest, which would equate to an annual debt service of $685,000. That would be offset by about $300,000 currently being paid in debt service for two bonds that will be paid off between the next two to four years.

Additionally, Larca said it is estimated that the building could generate about $420,000 in rental income each year, at a rate of $14 per square foot.

All this considered, the net bond payment would be zero – or even less than zero, according to Larca. “If these numbers are real, it would generate income,” he said. “It would not cost the taxpayers anything.”

In the event that these numbers are not accurate, another pro forma estimate was completed at an elevated cost of $17 million, which would cost the town $221,000 per year and equate to an $18 yearly tax increase on a home assessed at $550,000. At a $20 million project estimate, those numbers rise to $350,000, or $40 per household.

In addition, there are between about $500,000 and $2 million in grants available for the town to pursue.

“There’s a lot of challenges with this,” Larca said of the proposal. “It might be an impossibility.”

This includes the fact that the current owner of the building, 20 Garden Street LLC, has a loan on the property, and there are currently tax liens on the property. In addition, the village’s master developer has first dibs on it.

In addition, he said the town might decide it doesn’t want to get into the landlord business. “That carries a lot of risk with it, but I think if we could get a long-term lease with an organization like a BOCES, I think it could be worth that risk,” he said.

Larca addressed one rumor that has long been circulating about the property – that asbestos abatement would cost “millions and millions of dollars,” which he said simply is not true. Estimates have come in at around $600,000 to $700,000.

Fellow town board members expressed support for further looking into the proposal.

“We are bursting out the seams in this building,” said Councilwoman Wendy Lewis, referring to Southeast Town Hall. “A main ‘want’ for us (in looking for a new town hall) is a building that could provide something for the entire community, and this fits the bill… The cost is staggering but the concept itself is amazing and I’d love to explore this.”

Jamie Callanan, a former Brewster School Board member, also voiced support for the proposal, noting that people speak fondly about Garden Street’s “heart and soul.”

“What Brewster doesn’t have right now… is a heart and soul,” she said. “It does not have an anchor that pulls us all together.”

Alberta Kozma taught at Garden Street and her kids attended school there.

“It holds a real important place in people’s hearts who have been here a long time,” she said. “It was just a special place. You walked in that building and you felt heart and you felt family. It’s been an absolute shame to see what’s gone on there.”

Kozma, who is a former school board member and current Brewster Education Foundation member, said she was on the school board when it voted to close the school, after it was learned that it would cost more than $11 million to get it to meet state regulations for an educational building.

“With a heavy heart I voted to close it, never thinking that this is what would happen,” she said. “There has also been a push for a community center, for a recreation center for our children, because there is no place – there is no central location for them to go… This is the perfect spot for it.”

Larca said he hopes the board – and residents – will support the town issuing a request for proposals to hire professional services to complete a building assessment on the former school building.