The Valley Breeze

Citing savings, officials seek permission to level historic building

By ETHAN SHOREY, Valley Breeze Staff Writer

WOONSOCKET - City leaders have asked the Rhode Island Historical Preservation and Heritage Commission to relax a stipulation they say will otherwise cost taxpayers millions of extra dollars.

They are seeking relief from an earlier agreement that bans them from leveling a historic brick building off Hamlet Avenue, one of the two remaining after heavy machinery leveled most of the former mill site there last year to make way for two new middle schools.

As a precondition to Woonsocket building two schools on the historic property, RIHPHC officials had required that leaders keep and renovate two smaller buildings, a tiny guard house and a larger former office building.

Two state-of-the-art new middle school buildings, Woonsocket Middle School Hamlet Avenue and Woonsocket Middle School Villa Nova Street, continue to take shape off Hamlet Avenue.

But according to City Planner Joel Mathews, engineers have determined that the larger of two remaining historic buildings cannot be overhauled in a cost-effective manner.

School leaders were planning to use the former office building as a location for alternative education students.

Keeping the larger building and rehabbing it would end up costing the city between $3.5 million and $4 million, according to Mathews, or a whopping $500 per square foot.

"Architects determined that all structural items elements in the building would need to be replaced or built up," Mathews told The Breeze. "The cost of doing that type of work is about three to four times what new construction costs," he said.

Knocking down the old office building and replacing it with new construction would cost the city approximately $1 million, he said.

That's in addition to the $80 million bond paying for the two new middle schools, according to Mathews.

The construction at the larger building, said Mathews, could commence well after the schools are completed in the fall of this year.

As for the smaller former guard house, officials aren't sure how to use it and have put off a decision.

The projected rehab price tag is $810,000.

"We have yet to cross that bridge and talk with anyone about the work there," said Mathews.

Mathews said city leaders are not expecting that their request to make the restoration of the old guard house a part of Woonsocket's federal stimulus package will be granted. They instead plan to renovate the building with city funds at a future date.

The stimulus application was to renovate the tiny guard house as a work spot for a school audio-visual employee and as a display area for historic pictures of the old mill site. The proposal caused a slight uproar earlier this year when officials said it would create 50 jobs in the city.

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