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Meetings on the Horizon for Madison’s Academy School

After an eventful year for the former Academy School, 2017 may bring some new opportunities for the aging building. According to First Selectman Tom Banisch, the town is narrowing in on a professional facilitator and may begin to hold public meetings on the future of the building by the end of the month.

The Academy School has been a hot button topic in town since the school was vacated more than a decade ago. Over the past three years, the town had been working with Shoreline Arts Alliance (SAA) to explore the idea of building a cultural arts center and the two parties had signed a letter of intent designed to facilitate further investigation to that end. After discussions with SAA broke down in July 2016, however, the town must now come up with a new plan for the Academy.

By fall 2016, Banisch said the town was planning to hold meetings to solicit ideas for the building and was working to bring in professional facilitators to help run the meetings and offer a fresh perspective.

“We have talked to three consulting firms and told them what we are looking to do and we are honing in on one that we want to work with,” said Banisch. “We have made a lot of progress in terms of laying the groundwork for a lot of stuff that we are going to do.”

Moving forward, Banisch said he’s not looking to spend any more money on the building.

“One of the things people need to understand is we are not doing any more studies, we are not doing any more surveys, we are not trying to figure out anything more about the property. What we are doing is marketing it.”

To do that, Banisch said the town has undertaken an appraisal of the building and the surrounding land, which is expected back soon. Banisch said information like an appraisal will give the town and residents a better idea of what can be done with the building going forward.

“This is all background work that has to be done. It is all prep work towards having these meetings,” he said. “One of the things people have asked me about since I have been involved with this is ‘Can you please just tell us what to expect? How is it zoned, what can you do there, what will the Historical District Commission let you do?’ We are gathering all of this information together so we can put it out there.”

Banisch said he hopes to have the first meeting this month.

“I still want to get something done in January,” he said. “The first one may not be coordinated by anybody, it may just be an information session where we lay out a lot of FAQs and start to answer the questions people have.”