Lower Merion School Board OKs purchase of Villanova mansion site for new school
LOWER MERION » The Lower Merion School District this week entered into a formal agreement to purchase the former Clairemont Farm/ Morris Clothier Estate site at 1860 Montgomery Ave. in Villanova for a new middle school.
The unanimous vote Monday night followed last month’s announcement that the board would enter into an agreement to purchase the property if its three conditions were met.
According to the three conditions that were put into the final agreement approved Monday night, the site must not be upgraded to a Class 1 historic site by Lower Merion Township. As a Class 1 site, it would be more difficult, but not impossible, to demolish the building.
Secondly, the district must be able to get all necessary building and zoning permits for the demolition and construction of a new school. The third and most controversial issue is that it must be able to find adequate field space for outdoor activities.
One of those conditions has been resolved when a vote of the Lower Merion Board of Commissioners last month failed to upgrade the historic status of the mansion. The other two issues are yet to be resolved, and the district could legally back out of the agreement if either falls through.
“The agreement of sale that is now in what I would call a final version … still contains all of those contingencies, as well as the more specific details you’d expect from an agreement of sale,” district Solicitor Ken Roos said just prior to the board’s vote.
According to the agreement of sale, the district would purchase the 21.83acre site for $12 million.
The district has been looking for space to construct a new school for the past year or so. Although it has said the 1860 site is not ideal, it could be used if it could demolish the mansion and purchase additional land for field space.
Although there has been some concern with preservationists with regard to the demolition of the historic mansion at the 1860 site, the district’s consideration to use eminent domain to take some of the nearby Stoneleigh Garden for field space has created a major controversy for the district. The district administration has said it would need about 7 to 10 acres of additional field space. The portion of Stoneleigh it has considered taking is about 6.9 acres.
Over the past decade, the district has been working to deal with an influx of new students who have mostly come from existing housing turnover, according to district officials.
Over the past decade, the district has been working to deal with an influx of new students who have mostly come from existing housing turnover, according to district officials.
During the public comment portion of the meeting, resident David Feldman described recent turnover of properties as a generational shift that occurs every 30 or 35 years where residents who haven’t had kids living at home for 10 or 20 years are now selling those four- and five-bedroom houses to families with kids.
“All of those people who are buying those houses this decade are now going to be in those houses for 30 or 40 years, the last half of which they are not going to have [any] children and we’re going to have another dip,” Feldman said.
Rather than purchasing a space, he suggested the district could use former office buildings as other schools in the region have done.
Holly Manzone, of Narberth, told the board she’d like to see it abandon the 1860 purchase and the taking of any portion of the Stoneleigh property.
“Those of us who do support Stoneleigh and 1860 is part of that … we’re not trying to give you a hard time. We’re trying to help you, and I really believe that this whole process of taking 1860 would require [taking] parts of Stoneleigh is a mistake,” she said. “I think it’s a mistake that will haunt you for a long time, and if you go down that path, it’s just not going to be good, and so I do want to thank you but I also want to let you know we are going to persist because we think the path you are on is the wrong way.”
The as of yet-unnamed school to be built on the site of the Clairemont Farm/ Morris Clothier Estate is expected to be ready for use in the fall of 2022 and would be a middle school of fifth to eighth grade.