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11/05/2018 11:00 PMIt’s a question residents have heard time and again: What should we do with Academy School? Since no clear or resounding response to that question has yet come forward, the Academy Building Guidance Committee (ABGC) is getting ready to poll the community again.
Over the years, the town has tried to work through a couple of different solutions for the former school building. However, in 2016 discussions with the Shoreline Arts Alliance (SAA) broke down and then in early 2018, consideration of private residential development of the building came to a stretching halt due to an outcry from residents.
ABGC has been working through the summer to gather information on the building and possible options for future use. As part of that, the committee has been charged to conduct a statistically significant poll to gauge how residents feel about the building and what future use options they might be open to.
“This survey will be vital in helping the Town of Madison gain a better understanding of residents’ preference among many proposals for potential future uses of Academy,” said ABGC Chair Henry Griggs in a press release. “Previous surveys on that topic were useful to a point, but they were not designed to be statistically valid. The GreatBlue survey will take into account the views of registered voters in Madison, not just those who were motivated and able to respond over the Internet.”
The poll is scheduled to start the last week of November. To ensure residents are educated about the building and possible options, the committee will hold two public information sessions on Wednesday, Nov. 14 at the senior center and Polson Middle School.
During the information sessions, the committee is expected to review the history of the building, the numerous studies and options considered to date, and review the private and community options currently on the table. Currently there are four private development proposals on the table, meaning the town would not have to pay for any change of the building, but would likely also have to surrender ownership.
On the flip side of the equation, the committee has distilled three possible community use options, meaning the town would get to keep the building for public use, but would also have to pay for any and all remediation and construction costs. The options include a community center, leveling the building and turning it into a municipal park, and moving town offices back downtown and into the building.
Figuring out how to present numbers associated with the community options has been a point of discussion for the committee. The project management firm Colliers International came up with a variety of construction costs for the building, but not for specific options, meaning Colliers has numbers for the remediation of the building, but not a community center option.
Since those numbers are important to considering the community options, the committee is still working through how those rough estimates will be presented to the public in the information sessions while maintaining the fact that those numbers are just estimates.
“Whenever you use a specific number, people believe that is the eternal truth and what I have learned in the past couple of years in town government is numbers are actually truncheons that people use to beat each other with,” said Griggs. “It gets that way once you put a number down.”
Additionally the committee will need to explain factors that might reduce a construction estimate. For example, if a community center option is $14 million, that number may be offset by state tax credits and/or grants for maintaining a historic building. Furthermore, committee members agreed that when possible, the committee should have per-household cost estimates available for each project.
“Let’s face it,” said committee member Tom Scarpati. “The issue is going to get down to: Is the town willing to commit to an increase in tax, to amortize a number on the order of $10- to $20 million against no cost going with a developer type of thing? People have to understand it’s a significant number, but it’s also not the price of a new school. It’s significant, but it’s not out of the question, so whatever modifier there is that could reduce that number, it’s important that be shown or pointed to anyway.”
The two public information sessions are Wednesday, Nov. 14. The first session is at the Senior Center on Bradley Road at 3 p.m. and the second is at 7 p.m. at Polson Middle School. The presentations will be the same.