The Town of Shandaken is no longer interested in buying the former Phoenicia Elementary School on Route 214. The school this year became the ninth public school in Ulster County to close since 2004.
“This morning, the supervisor let me know he is indicating the town will not move forward with a plan that includes the Phoenicia building,” Onteora schools superintendent Victoria McLaren told the school board on August 6. “Although they recognize that there are many positives and possibilities with this site for the town, they also feel that there are too many challenges and conflicts, so they have decided to pass on the opportunity to work with us to take ownership of this building in any way.”
McLaren and LaClair recently met with Newburgh-based Pattern for Progress, which is assisting with Shandaken’s comprehensive plan. Pattern distributed a new report titled “Closed Schools, Open Minds,” which McLaren said contained “some very creative examples of how other communities have adapted closed school buildings for new purposes.”
About three-quarters of closed school buildings in the Hudson Valley have been reutilized as housing, event spaces, municipal government centers, or for other types of public or private education, Pattern found. Eleven closed Hudson Valley school buildings were sitting empty, demolished, or had been sold to new owners without a clear plan for their re-use.
Might Ulster County have a role to play in finding an appropriate use for the building? Assistant superintendent for business Monica LaClair participated with McLaren in a meeting of county legislators and town supervisors where the possibility of selling the property to the county for affordable housing was brought up.
The school district’s attorney had recommended steps that “seem to be counter to the guidance we have received in terms of what is allowable for a school.”
McLaren said numerous court and state education department decisions indicate the school board has a fiduciary duty to secure the best price possible for any lawful use.
But there is another possibility.
“There is a means by which a district is able to sell property for less than fair market value so long as the property will be used for a public purpose, which ties into what the legislator was asking us,” McLaren said. “So there is a 1979 comptroller’s opinion, which clearly states that providing adequate, safe and sanitary low-rent housing accommodations for persons and families of lower income is specifically declared by the legislature to be a public use and a purpose for which public money may be spent.”
The state comptroller determined that a private developer constructing federally subsidized housing on property conveyed to a city by a school district, and then leased by the city to the private developer was a public use.
Such a move would require voter approval.
The school board has to choose between listing the property with no stipulation on its use, or selling it to create low-income housing.
Trustee Emily Mitchell-Marell worried about the consequences of selling the property on the open market.
“Maybe this is obvious to say, but I’ll say it anyway,” she said. “The Phoenicia area is such a popular second-home destination. I guess the worst-case scenario would be a developer for whom millions of dollars isn’t really a big deal to them and makes it like more high-income housing or a hotel or something. And that doesn’t help us with enrollment. It doesn’t help us with anything.”
Trustee Rick Knutsen posited a scenario with two competing offers, one a pesticide plant and the other affordable housing. Could the board choose the latter even if it was a lower offer?
McLaren said she or LaClair will speak to the legislator who proposed the idea of selling the building to the county to get a better sense of how that path might work.
Other Ulster County schools that have closed
The other Ulster County schools closed in the past two decades have been the West Hurley School (2004), Rosendale Elementary (2012), Frank L, Meagher School (2013), Milton Elementary, (2013), Zena Elementary (2014), Anna Devine (2014), Sophie Finn (2014), and Mount Marion School (2023).
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