NEWBURYPORT — YWCA Greater Newburyport leader John Feehan sat down with the mayor on Monday and let him know it would be a lot easier for his organization to build senior affordable housing at the former Brown School if he didn’t have to keep the gymnasium.
In September, YWCA Greater Newburyport submitted a proposal to turn the dormant school into 44 units there if the gym was allowed to be torn down. It sent a second proposal that kept the gym but reduced the number of units to 29.
“There’s a real cost to keeping it (the gym) and a potential lost opportunity to develop affordable housing there,” Feehan said during an interview after his Monday meeting.
The city also received four other Brown School proposals, most of them without the gym.
Mayor Sean Reardon has stated he would like to see affordable senior housing offered on the property, while also keeping the former 42 Milk St. school’s gymnasium as a community asset.
A City Council-related Ad Hoc Committee on the Adaptive Reuse of the Brown School Property was formed last year after the heating element at the former elementary school was determined to be unusable and pushed Newburyport Youth Services out of the property in the fall of 2021.
A value-engineered alternative study showed an estimated $1.8 million would be needed to make the gym functional again and the Brown School Ad Hoc Committee issued a request for information (RFI) to potential contractors in July.
Proposals from four companies were received in September, with only two of those including the gymnasium.
In addition to the two YWCA ideas, Boston-based Parent and Diamond LLC and Urban Spaces LLC of Cambridge proposed building 64 units, 35 of which would be categorized as senior affordable housing and would also see the gymnasium demolished, while Haverhill-based Atlantis Investments also proposed building 30 studio/one bedroom apartments for people with developmental disabilities but would also do away with the gym as well.
Dillon Edward Thompson of local nonprofit Biofex Laboratories Inc. would, however, retain the gym in order to build a technology hub-specialized research laboratory.
The YWCA, according to Feehan, has a long track record of building affordable housing in the area and Newburyport desperately needs more.
“We see this need at all levels, all the way from families, to individuals, to seniors,” he said.
But Feehan said the state Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities could, however, present a challenge should the YWCA be forced to explore the 29-unit option.
“This is the primary funding mechanism for affordable housing in the state and if you do all senior housing, you then have to provide supportive services,” he said. “That becomes very challenging with only 29 units and makes the operation of it very, very tenuous.”
Although the YWCA believes it could still build a 29-unit housing project, Feehan said he’s not completely sure that would be the most viable solution.
“If we could take over and demolish the gym and build housing where that is now, we could expand this to, we think, 44 units,” he said. “You’re getting a little better scale with that. You can start doing a little bit more in terms of services for seniors in the building.”
Feehan also pointed to the YWCA’s successful completion of 42 affordable housing units at the former Spalding School in Salisbury as a model project for the Brown School property.
“This is how you do it, by taking the low-income housing tax credit,” he said. “With the Brown School, you could also use the historic tax credit and other public financing mechanisms and get enough revenue to do it.”
Site control is the biggest challenge in affordable housing, according to Feehan, who added that the second-biggest challenge is funding.
“The way funding works with the state is, it takes two or three years to get funded,” he said. “So, we need people who can control that site for two to three years while we go through the funding cycle. That’s why it’s important for the city to understand that. There are very few resources that the city has that it can convert into affordable housing. This is one of those few resources.”
Feehan said keeping the gymnasium also presents an added challenge in that it hasn’t been used in almost two years and would need to be brought back up to code.
“I think there’s a perception out there that gymnasium is currently being used. So, I was kind of stunned when I walked in there and saw all of the tables, the chairs, the desks and everything had been moved into that space and has not been used in a couple of years,” he said. “Any renovation by the city of that space is going to take a pretty significant investment. It also doesn’t have a heating system, so it’s not like it’s cost neutral to the city to keep the gym.”
Reardon said in a text message that the Brown School is one of the few, sizable, historic properties the city has under site control, and he wants to take full advantage of the property’s ability to advance the many priorities Newburyport has around housing and community development.
“We learned a good amount from the proposals we reviewed during the RFI process, and we are grateful to those who were able to share their visions for this site,” he said. “We look forward to drafting an RFP that will allow us to find a viable project that can help meet the city’s needs.”
Feehan said Monday’s conversation with Reardon went well.
“I think the mayor and his staff want to see affordable housing developed and are looking for the best way to move forward,” he said.
Staff writer Jim Sullivan covers Newburyport for The Daily News. He can be reached via email at jsullivan@newburyportnews.com or by phone at 978-961-3145. Follow him on Twitter @ndnsully.
