Schenectady schools eye community center plan
SCHENECTADY — The city school district is eyeing a downtown building that formerly housed an Orthony office as the site of a new family and community engagement center.
“Our hope is that we would be able to create a warm introduction to the district, and it would be a one-stop shop for families, and it would be available for them not just during the school day, but we would look to have extended hours,” Superintendent of Schools Anibal Soler Jr. told the Board of Education last week during its meeting.
An online listing by the property manager for 530 Liberty St. indicates that it is 18,500 square feet. It’s in a suitable location, across from the central branch of the public library and police station, and a block away from Schenectady City Hall.
It’s the same spot where backers of a full-scale grocery store wanted to open the Electric City Food Coop.
“The nice thing about it is that we believe there’s limited work that needs to get done at Orthony. It was set up with a reception area and office suites, conference rooms and a conference center,” said Soler, adding it may be more prudent to negotiate a long-term lease with an out-clause in the contract if the district encounters fiscal problems rather than purchasing it.
Some of that cost, he said, would be offset with grant money.
A school district spokeswoman said Monday that the prospective deal is part of the district’s Schenectady Revitalization 2030 Plan, but that the funding is not part of that massive $300 million capital project that Soler unveiled in January.
The board is expected to discuss the proposal in detail and perhaps establish a timetable to get into the former medical building once Soler comes back to them with some more specifics about a potential deal.
The district’s chief financial officer has said the capital project won’t cost city taxpayers anything but would instead be covered mostly by state building aid and EXCEL (Expanding Our Children’s Education and Learning) aid plus capital project reserves in the district’s coffers.
Soler estimated it would cost upwards of $300,000 to lease annually the now-vacant, privately owned
building and that the district would be able to “absorb that cost” under its current budget. He estimated the purchase price could be around $3 million.
The former Orthony site, accessible by public transportation, would serve a variety of needs, including housing the district’s central student registration office, a district/parent center, a place for parents to discuss their child’s transportation and special education needs, training sessions during the day, at night and on weekends, and fill out and bring in required employment paperwork for a job in the school system.
He pointed out that the district’s current administrative building at Mont Pleasant Middle School is not a suitable location for the planned community center because it is cramped and has limited parking.
Soler during the March 1 meeting also recommended that the district continue to lease for two more years the Albany Street building owned by the Albany Roman Catholic Diocese that currently houses the district’s William C. Keane elementary school.
“This will allow us to reassess things along with starting some of the construction in our Schenectady revitalization plan, and the Diocese is willing to use those two years of the lease to go toward the purchase price of the building ” he added.
The proposals, both of which school officials gave Soler the OK to explore further, are part of a $300 million capital project wish list, subject to board approval, designed to transform and modernize older school buildings that Soler has previously said have an average age of 95 years in this pre-kindergarten to Grade 12 district of 9,139 students.
Voters would need to approve both expenditures, which would appear as separate ballot questions, during school board and budget elections on May 16.