SAUGUS — At a public forum Monday evening, the Board of Selectmen and Town Manager Scott Crabtree heard suggestions from residents on how to move forward with identifying uses for closed school buildings and property.
The properties discussed were the Oaklandvale School, Lynnhurst School, Waybright School, Roby School, Ballard School, and Elm School, with the Selectmen quickly assuaging any concern from residents that the properties may be turned into commercial apartments, as all five members signaled their opposition to the idea.
Board member Jeff Cicolini said, “there’s no appetite” for potentially selling the buildings from either the board or other town officials, and explained that funding some of the projects suggested at the forum would require a debt exclusion.
Member Michael Serino added that the primary concern of the board was to protect the town’s neighborhoods.
Crabtree cautioned that whatever decisions the town comes to will not satisfy every resident, but he emphasized the importance of getting input from the community before moving forward with any plans regarding the school buildings.
The most immediate step the town will likely take, Crabtree said, is moving the youth & recreation department into one of the buildings, with the current facility not meeting the needs of students.
“We’re just trying to figure out the feasibility, assessing each of the buildings and what would need to be done and location … that would benefit the community as a whole,” Crabtree said.
Roughly 40 people filled the auditorium at town hall, with the primary suggestions focusing on new affordable housing for veterans and seniors, more park and cemetery space, and the potential introduction of a community building.
Albert Caldarelli, the executive director of the East Boston Community Development Corporation, or EBCDC, said in his role with the EBCDC, the organization has taken six schools and converted them into affordable senior housing, and he pushed for doing the same in Saugus.
“To get affordable housing for our seniors has to be one of the crucial elements for us and I look forward to seeing if some of that can be done in these school buildings,” he said. “When we do a school like that, it’s very important that the seniors not be isolated.”
Some residents pressed for using one of the buildings, potentially the Oaklandvale site, for the construction of a third fire station on the west side of Saugus, a long-simmering idea that Board of Selectmen Chair Anthony Cogliano has been a vocal supporter of.
Crabtree shot down the idea of using that particular site for a fire station as it sits 1.5 miles from the town’s main fire station.
“To service both Saugus and the west side, a better location than that would probably serve the community together,” he said. “It’s not far enough [from the main station] or over enough to deal with North Saugus.”
“While we’re talking about the schools tonight, we will find a space, even if it’s not a school, for that station,” added Cogliano.
Crabtree said the process of identifying uses for the buildings and then adapting them to those uses would take years, and that Monday night’s forum represented the first of many steps. Town departments, he said, would take suggestions from residents and other officials to identify needs across town before trying to figure out what fits in what building.
“We’re going to take this information in and at some point the town itself internally with department heads … have to figure out what the actual needs are of the community and try to figure out what may best fit there with sort of proposals … it’s not going to please everybody but it’s trying to think about that and have those tough, difficult discussions right now,” he said. “Right now it’s ideas, so this is all great.”
Cogliano suggested that board members or other town officials could head up different groups focused on identifying uses for each building.
“This is just step number one. We’ll be having a lot more of these steps as we go along. This is a good beginning and I hope that if we do break off into groups, we still get a good amount of people to come out and share their ideas because we have a long way to go,” he said, noting that the board would likely schedule a similar forum in the new year to garner more feedback and suggestions.
Charlie McKenna can be reached at [email protected].
