If you’ve driven through the Village of New Paltz recently, you may have noticed that the former New Paltz Central School District administrative building at the corner of Main Street and South Manheim Boulevard was still there. District officials have noticed that too.
“I thought it’d be worth mentioning that the blue building is still there,” said superintendent Stephen Gratto at a meeting of the board of education held on Wednesday, May 22. “Every time I look, it’s still there.”
A year ago, trustees approved plans to demolish the dilapidated blue house, which the district left close to 15 years ago, first renting space for six years on Henry W. DuBois Drive before taking up residence in 2016 at Lenape Elementary School, space formerly used by Ulster BOCES.
The former administrative headquarters were abandoned for the same reason it’s proven difficult to sell ever since: It’s riddled with asbestos.
The building, with its familiar message board on the front lawn, was most recently used by a construction manager for the Palombo Group during the district’s comprehensive $52.9 million capital project, approved by voters in 2014. According to district officials, the Palombo Group shored up the interior spaces making the space usable during the renovation project, but it was not viewed as a long-term solution.
Last year, district officials began discussing what to do with the property, engaging CPL, a national architectural and engineering firm, to make recommendations for the property. The materials used in the buildings date them to between 70-100 years old, with the age of the connecting corridor unknown.
In their report released last spring, CPL concluded that repairing and renovating the building as-is would cost around $2,472,614, while demolition and either expanding the adjacent New Paltz Middle School parking lot or restoring the area with landscaping would range between $400,000-475,000. They also stressed that kicking the proverbial can down the road would be inadvisable.
“If the building continues to be left unoccupied and in its current state, the property will suffer further deterioration and may become a neighborhood nuisance,” read the CPL report. “Given there is no immediate use to the district and based on the costs outlined above, we would recommend demolition of the building.”
“We did put in a request for state approval to tear it down last December,” said Gratto during last week’s School Board meeting. “We have yet to get permission.”
That hasn’t prevented the district from moving forward, with bids for the work opened last week.
“We got some prices that seemed reasonable from our contractors,” Gratto said. “Really, the bigger issue than money is timing. Because we don’t want to be in a position where we are ripping that place apart the first week of school. In fact, we won’t be in that position, even if it means waiting another year.”
The hope, Gratto said, is that the state approval comes through no later than the middle of July, which contractors believe would allow not only for the demolition to be completed, but also the prep work needed for asbestos abatement.
“If we get approval in the middle of July, we might be able to pull this off before September first,” Gratto said.
Debra Kosinski, assistant superintendent for business, said she’d spoken to architects who were “pretty confident” with the timeline.
“I think four-and-a-half weeks is time to do the abatement, to do the demo, and then put grass down and make it nice and simple,” Kosinski said. “They didn’t see any problems with the timing.”
Gratto said that so far, the project is likely to come in under budget.
“It’s good because we’ll want to use some of the money to make that spot look good,” he said. “We want it to be nice. We want it to be low maintenance for our custodial department. We want tables and stuff where people can eat. We probably want to have some sort of brick layout so that people can buy bricks to honor people who they want to honor, especially former educators. And we want to have a marquee; not a lit one, but just something good-looking.”
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