LYNN — A portion of the 97-year-old former Thurgood Marshall Middle School is slated for demolition.
The Porter Street school building has been closed since 2015.
The City of Lynn is soliciting bids for a general contractor for the demolition of the middle school’s 1963 addition and an abatement contractor for asbestos removal in the entire building, according to Michael Donovan, chief of the city’s Inspectional Services Department.
Bids for the $3.5 million project are due on June 19, according to a legal notice from the city of Lynn.
Donovan said the bids are usually awarded about a month after the deadline, with work following a short time later. He estimated the job, which has been approved by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection, would take about nine months, with work concluding in the wintertime.
“We’re going to clean the interior of the building and abate what we can see without doing destructive work,” said Donovan. “We’re going to close up the building and seal it up. The 1963 building will be torn down. The 1923 building will remain on site (and will be) cleaned so we can access it and go through it and ready it for demolition (or sale) at some future time.”
The 1923 portion, or main building, will be “mothballed,” or maintained for potential future use, as the city does not have the funds on hand to carry out the full demolition of the former middle school, Donovan said, explaining that demolition of the main building would cost an additional “few million” dollars.
“That building is heavily contaminated with asbestos and interspatial and below-floor wall cavities,” said Donovan. “When it’s being demolished, it’s very difficult to dispose of the contaminated debris.”
The two buildings, the three-story main portion and its two-story addition, are connected, but part of the demolition work will include sealing up the entryways for that connection, which Donovan said may help deter some of the vandalism and break-ins that have occurred on a regular basis.
The majority of break-ins seem to start in the 1963 addition, which gives those people access to the entire building through the entryways, Donovan said.
“By removing the 1963 building, we believe we can keep it much more secure than it has been in the past,” said Donovan.
City Council President Darren Cyr said the city had planned to demolish the building last year, but there was more asbestos in the building than anticipated, which put the project on hold.
Demolition can now move forward after the MassDEP signed off on what Donovan referred to as the city’s “non-traditional work plan” for the project.
“In order to do it, you have to do it in a safe way,” said Cyr. “The entire neighborhood would have to be safe when they go to take it down. The danger (to) the neighborhood is you have a vacant building and the city has to maintain it to keep it safe and that is at a cost.”
City officials have attempted several times to sell the former school building to a developer seeking to build senior housing at the site, but there’s been a lack of interest due to the $2 million-plus cost a prospective buyer would have to incur for demolition, according to Cyr.
Cyr said the planned demolition would make the property more desirable to developers, because the land would become more valuable once the building is taken down. The building has fallen into such disrepair that it wouldn’t make sense for a developer to try to rehabilitate it, he said.
“It would make it more desirable for a developer to come and buy it with a vacant lot,” said Cyr. “There’s not many places where you have a lot that size. I believe it’s four acres of land so it would pique a lot of developers’ interest to do it. I know there’s a lot of developers that want to build senior housing there, but the problem is the cost to demo the building.”
Once demolition is complete, Cyr said the city will issue a Request for Proposals for senior housing. The most recent RFP, issued last year, was for a mix of 80-percent affordable and 20-percent market-rate 55-plus housing.
In April 2019, at the recommendation of the city’s law department, city officials decided to reject the two bids that were submitted and move forward with tearing the building down, with the cost of demolition incurred by the city.
When bids are submitted for the demolition and abatement work, the city will hold a neighborhood meeting. The purpose of the meeting will be to inform neighbors of the project schedule and what it will entail before work starts, said Donovan, who noted neighbors have been “rightly concerned” about the break-ins and vandalism that have occurred at the site.
