Developer: City nixed bigger school offer
Man who sought to purchase Social Street property says he never heard back on $90K proposal
WOONSOCKET – In a surprise twist, the City Council Monday put the brakes on a plan to sell the Social Street School to a local developer after a rival suitor questioned why Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt never presented his original – and more generous – offer to the council months ago.
The mayor provided councilors with details of two offers for the 706 Social St. schoolhouse for the first time on Jan. 29 – one from Gary Fernandes, for $50,000, and another from Blackstone mason John Lippolis, for $65,000. The council abruptly put the proposed sale to Fernandes on hold when Lippolis showed up and asked why the panel never considered a written offer, hand-delivered to the mayor on his behalf last fall by lawyer Lloyd Gariepy – for $90,000.
The question seemed to catch councilors completely off-guard. They told him they had no idea there ever was any other offer on the schoolhouse but the two that were presented to them by the mayor for the first time just over a week ago.
“I apologize...none of this information you’re sharing with this council was shared with this council,” said Council Vice President Jon Brien. “This is frustrating beyond belief. We will get to the bottom of this, I promise you that.”
The owner of J.W. Masonry in Blackstone, Lippolis and his project manager, Robert Fluckiger, questioned whether the administration had ever been dealing with them in good faith. Lippolis said his initial offer was made in partnership with another investor, Harvey Smith, and the Social Street School was just one property they were interested in at the time.
Lippolis told them one of Smith’s agents was Rene Menard of Lincoln, a former state representative whose term overlapped that of Baldelli-Hunt, a state lawmaker before she was elected mayor in 2013. After several months went by and they heard nothing from the city about the $90,000 offer on the school, Lippolis said the mayor called him and told him, “We’re going to keep the building now.”
A short time later, Fluckiger said, it was Menard who reached out to them and suggested they resubmit – with a lower offer. Lippolis also claimed it was the mayor herself who suggested the closing be hitched to a 180-day study period – a contingency not a part of Fernandes’ bid – and which city officials later pitched to the council as a negative.
At $65,000, Lippolis told the council, “I said to the mayor I’d buy it outright tomorrow.” Lippolis said the mayor told him, “No, you don’t have to do that, just put the 180 in” because no one else was interested in the building.
Lippolis said he understands that city officials would naturally favor a developer like Fernandes – he’s local and has an solid track record – but he would have appreciated it if they just told him up front that he was going to be frozen out of the deal.
“I felt it wasn’t a level playing field...almost criminal. They wasted my time,” he said. “None of this makes any sense. I deal with Boston – they’re pretty bad too...at least it’s somewhat of a level field. This was like a movie.”
Like Brien, Council President Dan Gendron was deeply troubled by Lippolis’s version of events and called on City Solicitor John DeSimone to find out what happened after Gariepy delivered Lippolis’s original bid to the mayor. He said the council would take no action on the proposed sale of the school until the matter is cleared up.
“There may be some legal issues here,” he said, “and I don’t want to add fuel to the fire.”
Baldelli-Hunt was not present for Monday’s council meeting in Harris Hall, but when she was reached by phone yesterday her version of events differed markedly from that of Lippolis.
The mayor says Lippolis tendered the offer on the school at a time when he and his partners were in what she thought were opened-ended negotiations for multiple parcels in the city.
“Then I didn’t hear back from him,” the mayor said.
Because she hadn’t heard from Lippolis for some time, the mayor began trying to reach him. When they finally connected, Lippolis told her there had been a change in circumstances and he was no longer in a position to pursue the deal.
“He came back and said his financial backer had a change of heart and wasn’t going to be backing the offer,” Baldelli-Hunt said.
A short time later, the mayor said, Lippolis countered with the $65,000 proposal, which was one of the two bids disclosed to the city council at an open work session on Jan. 29.
The mayor denied having had anything to do with counseling Lippolis to come in with a lower offer or tying the sale to a 180-day period of due diligence. Menard, she said, was always acting as a representative of the buyers and “has nothing to do with the administration.”
As for the due-diligence contingency, Baldelli-Hunt said, “We don’t urge people to do that. That’s not for us to meddle in private business affairs.”
Contrary to the council’s claims about being excluded from the information loop, Baldelli-Hunt says she advised the council that a developer had expressed “possible interest” in the Social Street School about two months ago, but she didn’t share the details because she did not have clearance from Lippolis to provide them. The mayor
Baldelli-Hunt says Fernandes’s interest in the Social Street School was comparatively recent and also completely unsolicited. It was Fernandes who reached out, advising her he wanted to get active in redevelopment projects in the city after a long hiatus because he admired her leadership on economic development, according to Baldelli-Hunt.
The owner and operator of River Falls Restaurant, Fernandes has restored and remodeled a number of historic sites in the city dating back decades, including the popular Market Square restaurant overlooking Thundermist Falls. He previously acquired the Grove Street and Vose Street elementary schools, which he converted into apartment houses.
Yesterday, Fluckiger stuck by his company’s version of events and said the mayor’s response does not address how the J.W. Masonry’s original bid fell into a black hole and disappeared.
“It just boggles my mind.... why wasn’t that $90,000 offer presented in a workshop to begin with?” said Fluckiger. “What went wrong here? It can’t be lack of communication on our part. We just went off the grid here. Our lawyer hand-delivered it to the mayor.” said she mentioned it to the council because she wanted to see whether the panel would be receptive to considering the offer without opening the school up to competitive bids. She said council members must have forgotten the conversation.
Brien said the mayor previously mentioned interest from “a couple of potential bidders” for the school in very general terms, but the first he and other councilors heard of Lippolis’s original offer, which dates back to September, was on Monday night – from Lippolis himself.
“Never once was there any indication that Mr. Lippolis wanted to purchased the building for $90,000,” said Brien. “Never. We were never apprised of an offer being made on the property for $90,000 because, if we had been apprised of it, I’m pretty certain we have have said, ‘Yes.’”
The city has issued publicly advertised requests for proposals to sell the Social Street School at least three times in the last five years, but it never received any offers as a result, officials say. The most recent effort was in 2016, with a bid deadline of December – nearly a year before Lippolis surfaced. The minimum asking price for the 22,770-squarefoot brick schoolhouse at Social and East School streets was $80,000 at the time of the last RFP. Follow Russ Olivo on Twitter @russolivo