The Gloucester Community Arts Charter School has signed — and this time the landlord has accepted — a lease that will allow the school to open its doors in the Blackburn Industrial Park building recently vacated by the Cape Ann Medical Center.
The building at 2 Blackburn Drive was the charter school's second choice location, targeted only after a deal to lease space in the William G. Brown Building on Pleasant Street fell through in January.
Like the proposed deal for space in Brown's Mall, the former medical center building lease will be for 15 years with an average annual rent of around $406,000.
But unlike Brown's Mall, the Blackburn space does not fulfill the goal of charter founders to be downtown and within walking distance of the city's primary cultural institutions.
The main advantages of the new site are for drivers.
A lack of off-street parking and a dedicated bus drop-off were major concerns for the Brown's Mall location. Blackburn is built for automobiles and charter officials yesterday promised plenty of parking and easy pick-up.
The Blackburn site will also allow the school to provide plenty of outdoor recess space for students and a larger gym than Brown's Mall.
After weeks of rumors that they were close to a deal, the charter school board of trustees announced they had signed a lease for Brown's Mall.
But it became clear within a few days that the owners of that building, the Montagnino family, had not signed the deal and negotiations were stalled over the cost of renovations and parking.
In early February, charter officials confirmed that the deal for Brown's Mall was dead and they had turned to a second choice "close to downtown," widely assumed to be the former medical center.
"I think it allows us to do a larger multipurpose space and there will be lots of outdoor play space here," said interim charter school Executive Director Matthew Gallup about being in Blackburn yesterday. "And parking is not an issue."
To make it suitable for use as a school, the owner of 2 Blackburn Drive, Mick Lafata, has agreed to do $1.8 million worth of renovations to the 1971 building, including the addition of a new gymnasium and kitchen.
The inside of the building will also be gutted and a new roof, windows and ventilation system installed.
Since the medical center announced that it was moving across the street to the former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration building, Lafata had been searching for a tenant or buyer for his property.
He had an agreement in principal to sell the parcel to a hotel developer looking to built a Hampton Inn & Suites, but that deal was scuttled when the city balked at changing the zoning in the industrial park. The hotel is now being proposed for land on the west bank of the Annisquam River, next to Cape Ann Marina.
"I think this is a long-term solution for the building," Lafata said. "(The school) likes it because it gives them a more campus-like setting. And down the road if I need to add more space I can."
The announcement of a lease comes at a critical time for the charter school, as it works to recruit students in advance of a March 15 lottery and March 19 deadline to file an enrollment report with the state.
The charter school has endured more than a year of constant criticism from local public school supporters — opposed to its cost to the district schools — and a place at the center of a state-wide controversy over political arm-twisting.
Gallup yesterday admitted that the school was below the 120 student applications it is looking for to fill its first enrollment targets in grades 4-7, although he declined to say how many applications the school had actually received. The school ultimately is looking for 240 students in kindergarten through grade 8.
But Gallup indicated that he was not overly concerned about the enrollment, and that even if the school does not fill up immediately, it will keep recruiting students for as long as it takes.
Critics of Gloucester Community Arts have repeatedly accused its organizers of being overly secretive and unresponsive to questions about their operations.
Gloucester School Superintendent Christopher Farmer on Wednesday told the School Committee he had been refused a request for minutes of charter board meetings by a lawyer representing the school on the grounds that he was harassing them.
The composition of the GCA Board of Trustees has also been a subject of dispute.
Several parents and district leaders say they have been unable to get a list of board members and believe that the board may be below the seven-member minimum spelled out in its bylaws.
Gallup yesterday said there are now seven members on the board (after Joe Knowles of Manchester Wednesday replaced Kate Ruff, who resigned a month ago) although he could not name them.
The last of seven information sessions run by the charter school was scheduled for last night at the Sawyer Free Library.
Patrick Anderson can be reached at 978-283-7000, x3455, or at panderson@gloucestertimes.com.
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