HEATH — Should the former Heath Elementary School building on remote Jacobs Road become an arts and education center, a shared multi-business office center, an apartment complex or a needed municipal space for several town departments?
Those are potential uses considered over the past year by the Heath School Transition Team. And now, the town will be seeking ideas from others who may have good uses for the 1995-built, single-level school building.
The Heath School closed in June 2017, because enrollment declines made the school unsustainable; there were only 32 students in the final year, but the cost to operate the school with the state-required, certified educators was over $1 million. Since then, the Heath schoolchildren have been tuitioned to the Hawlemont Regional School in Charlemont. In exchange for closing the school, the Mohawk Trail Regional School District gave Heath a $240,000 settlement, which was to help maintain the building until the town can find a new use for it.
Selectboard member Gloria Fisher said the town is working with Andrea Woods of the Franklin Regional Council of Governments to put out a request for proposals from those who might want to lease the property. After meeting monthly for six months, the Transition Team came up with the following recommendations about re-using the school.
■Maintain town ownership.
■Find a use that would allow the building to revert back to an educational use in the future.
■Discard the idea of converting it to housing, due to the high cost, permanence and uncertain housing market.
■Consider installing a 72-kilowatt solar energy system that would be more than sufficient to meet the building’s electricity needs.
■Feasible use will likely be multipurpose.
Separate summary reports were written by four separate subcommittees.
Looking at how to reduce utility costs, the Energy Subcommittee decided a 72-kW solar electric system could be installed on the slope between the playground and the ball fields. The town could apply for a Municipal Energy Technical Assistance grant to provide roughly $12,500 for site analysis. Either the town could build its own solar array and receive 100 percent of the energy credits, or another party could build it on the town-owned land and pay for installation and maintenance. The town could receive up to 15 percent of the energy credits to apply toward the building’s energy costs.
The committee says the town-owned facility is a better option, but needed to know how much of the project could be paid for with the town’s $130,000 Green Communities grant, and what would be the cost benefit. Another step would be to explore alternative heating/cooling options for the school.
Re-using the school for town offices and much-needed storage space for town records could “bring life back to a building, which was lost with the closing of the school,” according to the Municipal Subcommittee. The benefits of using the 25,000 square-foot school for town offices is that it is spacious and doesn’t require an elevator to be handicap-accessible; also it is newer than the town’s existing office spaces. In a survey sent to town departments in Sawyer Hall, “almost every department responded with a concern for storage space,” says their report. “Several departments needed additional workspace as well.”
The report also says a water issue with Sawyer Hall precludes any permanent storage there. The Municipal Committee was evaluating whether moving town departments into the school would benefit the town financially.
The Arts and Education Subcommittee said the school building, with its kitchen and past uses for children’s theater, could be used as a creative arts center for everything from cooking classes in the kitchen, children’s theater performances, a full summer camp program, nature walks around the property and classroom environmental education.
“Another idea is to create a small art school with an outdoor sculpture park,” says their report. “Getting people to come all the way up the hill for anything they can get in town would be a hard sell, so we could capitalize on our beauty and remoteness by making it a destination in the form of a sculpture park. This could bring many new people to our building. Inside the building could be an additional gallery, as well as artist studios and classrooms.”