What to do with Coggeshall School building in Portsmouth?

Town soliciting creative ideas for future use of now-vacant building

By Jim McGaw
Posted 10/17/18

PORTSMOUTH — The possibilities are endless for the former Coggeshall School — and the town wants to hear all about them.

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

Register to post events


If you'd like to post an event to our calendar, you can create a free account by clicking here.

Note that free accounts do not have access to our subscriber-only content.

Day pass subscribers

Are you a day pass subscriber who needs to log in? Click here to continue.


What to do with Coggeshall School building in Portsmouth?

Town soliciting creative ideas for future use of now-vacant building

Posted

PORTSMOUTH — The possibilities are endless for the former Coggeshall School — and the town wants to hear all about them.

The building at 321 East Main Road has been vacant since July 1, when the Aquidneck Island Christian Academy closed its doors and ended its lease with the town. Now the town is seeking ideas on how to redevelop the property for future use, whether it be for more classrooms, office space, recreational opportunities or more.

Before putting out a request for proposals (RFP), the town has issued a pre-solicitation notice so as to not leave any stone un-turned, said Richard Talipsky, the town’s director of business development. 

“I was thinking that maybe we were being a little myopic and that’s why I said put out a pre-solicitation to try to get these really innovative ideas — something we haven’t thought about,” Mr. Talipsky said during a walk-through of the building last Friday. “Once you put out the RFP, it’s very formal about people coming in and following due process. It’s very strict. But before I put out the RFP, people can come into my office and take to me informally about their ideas.”

The building is named after John Coggeshall, one of the town’s founders and a signer of the Portsmouth Compact. The original, south section of the building is dated to about 1924 but has been remodeled several times since. An addition with more classrooms and an all-purpose gymnasium was constructed in 1965.

“It’s had many purposes over the years,” said Mr. Talipsky. “The town doesn’t have enough money to just take it over and maintain it. We’d like to get somebody to operate the building for us and come up with a private-public partnership to be able to infuse money into it and not have to use a lot of town tax dollars to do it, and make it available for the citizens.”

Keeping the building occupied and maintained is more important than making a big profit, he said.

“The big thing is the upkeep,” said Mr. Talipsky. “We don’t want the town to make a lot of money on this. We just want to make sure somebody’s in the building, taking care of it. If you have a vacant building, it will crumble from the inside out. But if you have someone inside, taking care of the little things that fester into big things, it’s good for the town.”

Ideally, the town will find a tenant — or tenants — who will operate the Coggeshall building in a manner similar to how two other town-owned properties are being managed, he said. 

The town doesn’t make any money on the Glen Farm stables but the couple that manages the historic property, Ann and Sam Clemens of Clemens Equine LLC, “put so much into the place” that it’s a favorable lease for the town, he said.

It’s a similar situation at Melville Campgrounds, operated by Justin May of WP Management Group, which owns and operates Whispering Pines Campground in Hope Valley and the Ashaway RV Resort. The town hired the company in December 2014 to take over the campground operations and many physical improvements have been made to the property since.

“We were going to refurbish the bathhouse to the tune of $800,000. This guy took over, we gave him a 25-year lease, and he put the money into (improvements). It was almost a money-losing operation for the town, now it’s a money-maker both for us and the private concessionaire. That’s what we want to see here — a win-win situation,” said Mr. Talipsky.

Possible uses

As to some possible uses for the building, Mr. Talipsky said anything’s on the table.

“The classrooms are in pretty good shape. They could be used as classrooms or little mini-offices,” he said, noting that some of the rooms have their own sinks, bathrooms and connecting doors and could also be used for offices.

“There are a lot of things called collectives or co-ops,” he said, pointing to the new SIREN shared office space located next to The Green Grocer. A similar shared workspace could work in the more spacious Coggeshall building, which also has room for child care, Mr. Talipsky said.

The town is also considering recreational opportunities, since the building’s gymnasium is in good condition. He pointed to the YMCA using the Common Fence Point Improvement Association Hall, which is currently under renovation, as a satellite location for programming.

“Maybe the YMCA people want to come over here and use this,” he said, noting that Recreation Director Wendy Bulk has reached out to the Y to gauge the organization’s interest.

“I would hope we could get somebody to broker those kinds of people for us; the town doesn’t have the kind of staff to manage this,” he said.

Portsmouth Community Theater has also used the gym to stage plays, and the Aquidneck Island Planning Commission formerly used a classroom in the south side for its offices.

Challenges in south side

According to Mr. Talipsky, the fire marshal has gone through the newer, north side of the building and has found only a few minor deficiencies — wiring, a broken exit sign, etc. Up to 40 people can occupy that side of the building. Fire codes are more stringent for school use, so the town would want to see it brought up to code “so anyone could use it,” he said.

As to whom would be responsible for the code upgrades — the town or the new tenant(s), Mr. Talipsky said “either/or.” 

“But there’s limited room in the budget,” he said. “I’d rather have someone else pay for it.”

The older, south side of the building is in marginal condition and not currently authorized for occupancy. It’s now used only for storage; Portsmouth Little League and Portsmouth Patriots Pop Warner Football keep their gear there.

“The south side needs a lot of work — fire protection upgrades and things like that,” said Mr. Talipsky, adding that the boiler and heating system on the south side would probably need to be replaced, and a leaky roof repaired in one area.

The building is a little over 25,000 square feet in size, with the north side taking up slightly more than half of that. The building is currently assessed at $1.385 million. It includes about 23,000 square feet of open space on the east side, which is separate from the baseball fields behind the building.

To view the full pre-solicitation notice, click here.

The deadline for comments and questions regarding the pre-solicitation is Thursday, Nov. 1. For more information, contact Richard Talipsky at 401/643-0382 or rtalipsky@PortsmouthRI.com.

Coggeshall School, Aquidneck Island Christian Academy

2024 by East Bay Media Group

Barrington · Bristol · East Providence · Little Compton · Portsmouth · Tiverton · Warren · Westport
Meet our staff
Jim McGaw

A lifelong Portsmouth resident, Jim graduated from Portsmouth High School in 1982 and earned a journalism degree from the University of Rhode Island in 1986. He's worked two different stints at East Bay Newspapers, for a total of 18 years with the company so far. When not running all over town bringing you the news from Portsmouth, Jim listens to lots and lots and lots of music, watches obscure silent films from the '20s and usually has three books going at once. He also loves to cook crazy New Orleans dishes for his wife of 25 years, Michelle, and their two sons, Jake and Max.