Back to square one on Social Street School?
Council endorses plan to invite new round of bids for vacant building
WOONSOCKET – The City Council narrowly passed a measure calling for a new round of bids for the sale and renovation of Social Street School, despite a warning that they were at risk of losing their most capable suitor by doing so.
This week’s 4-3 vote to reopen the sale to all interested parties was the latest twist in a brouhaha that erupted over a month ago, after Mayor Lisa Baldelli-Hunt invited the council to choose between two unsolicited offers for the 116-year-old brick schoolhouse, located at 706 Social St.
During a meeting on Feb. 5, the council had appeared poised to sell the property to Gary Fernandes for $50,000, citing his record of remodeling older and architecturally challenging properties. Another bidder was John Lippolis of Blackstone, who was offering $65,000. The sale derailed when Lippolis stunned
the council by showing up at the meeting unexpectedly and asking why the city had never responded to his earlier bid, dating back to September, for $90,000.
Baldelli-Hunt and Lippolis have since offered starkly conflicting accounts of why news of that earlier bid was never disclosed to the council or why Lippolis would cut his more generous offer by $25,000 if he was seriously interested in buying the three-story, 22,770-foot schoolhouse. Baldelli-Hunt claims Lippolis modified his offer after an investment partner pulled out, but Lippolis denies the claim, insisting he submitted the lower offer on advice from a former House colleague of the mayor who had been brought in to help negotiate the deal.
On Monday, Baldelli-Hunt and the council retread some of that turf, with the council criticizing the mayor for keeping them in the dark and the mayor accusing councilors of exploiting Lippolis’s “fabricated” story for political gain.
“You like to spin things,” Baldelli-Hunt admonished Councilman James Cournoyer. “You just want to make an issue of something and this is what you spend your time on.”
The normally reserved Director of Planning Joel Mathews joined in with an enthusiastic endorsement of Fernandes, warning the council that he might walk away altogether if he’s forced into an unwanted bidding war for the school. Mathews heaped effusive praise on the work record of the owner-operator of River Falls Restaurant, located in an early stone mill perched along the banks of the Blackstone River – a site originally eyed by the city for the Museum of Work and Culture.
The city rejected the structure as a possible museum site, concluding it was a relic that had already been claimed by the ravages of time, but Fernandes saved the building, Mathews said.
“That building was falling into the Blackstone River,” Mathews said. “He’s a tenacious son of a gun and he did what was right for that building architecturally and historically.”
Fernandes has since gone on to redevelop several former schoolhouses
that have been shed by the Woonsocket Education Department, as well as other venerable city landmarks, including the onetime Seventh District Court on Front Street and the St. Frances House, a Blackstone Street property which had previously been run as an assisted living center by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence. Fernandes converted most of his acquisitions into apartment houses – which is what he, and Lippolis, had both proposed doing with the Social Street School.
“I cannot speak any more strongly on my recommendation,” Mathews said. “You’re going to lose the one person who can do the best job.”
But Cournoyer said opening the bid process from scratch is the best course of action now to ensure that the procurement has been fair, transparent and open to anyone with a bona fide interest in the property.
After learning that a $90,000 offer from Lippolis had somehow dropped off the city’s radar before the two recent bids came to light, Cournoyer said he was also concerned whether there may have been other suitors for the property the council doesn’t know about.
“This is not about any specific developer,” he said. “This is simply about process, letting everybody know they have a bite at the apple. If nobody’s interested, nobody’s interested. If somebody’s interested, somebody’s interested.”
Under a measure approved by the council, anyone interested in making an offer on the school must submit it in writing to the office of City Clerk Christina Duarte no later than 2 p.m. on March 23.
Voting with the majority were Council President Daniel Gendron, Vice President Jon Brien, Councilor Denise Sierra and Cournoyer, while Councilors Christopher Beauchamp, Melissa Murray and Richard Fagnant voted against the resolution.
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. Worth about $80,000, according to a 2016 appraisal, Social Street School has been closed for over a decade.