The Town Council will hold an executive session to discuss three developers who expressed an interest in possibly redeveloping the Pierson School site on Aug. 10. The entire meeting will be behind closed doors, but a public session may be planned in the future.

Earlier this year, the town sent out a Request for Proposal (RFP) to gauge interest in redeveloping the old Pierson School property located in the heart of Clinton.

“After reviewing a number of potential types of development, the council preferred that the site be used for senior housing. There was also interest in exploring a public/private partnership that would keep Pierson as part of the civic life of the community,” Town Manager Karl Kilduff explained last year.

At a Town Council meeting on June 7, Kilduff told the council that the town had received three responses to the RFP. Kilduff and Town Planner Abby Piersall then interviewed each firm to get more detail on the proposals to better explain them to the council members.

At a meeting on July 19, the council set a date for a workshop for council members to hear details on the proposals.

If members of the public were thinking of attending the workshop to learn what developers are considering for the site, they will be disappointed. The workshop will be held entirely in executive session, meaning the public won’t be able to hear what was discussed, and the council members can’t elaborate afterward on what was discussed in the meeting.

Town Council Chairman Chris Aniskovich stressed that no decisions were going to be made in the executive session; it is simply for the members to hear the details of the proposals from the developers.

However, Aniskovich said he assumed a public presentation may be made in the future. He said that while there are no formal plans for the presentation now, it’s likely that following the executive session, the council will discuss how to present the information it received in executive session to the public at some point.

The Pierson School has been empty for almost exactly four years. In 2018, the town’s Board of Education voted to close the school at the end of the 2019 school year after it had been open for 80 years. A facility-needs study conducted by the school system found that closing the school was prudent in the face of declining enrollment and rising operational costs.

Though there is still a way to go before anything concrete happens with the property, the Town Council has continued discussing the building. An engineering study was conducted on the vacant building to help determine its condition and the feasible potential reuses. The town held one public feedback session in the fall of 2022 to listen to what members of the community thought about the future of the building. After that meeting, Aniskovich said another public feedback session would be held.

During a presentation last August, Kilduff said the town essentially has three decisions to make when it comes to the property: retain the property for town use, lease some building space to potential tenants and retain some space for town use, or sell the property entirely.

The RFP responses were sought to help inform the council of any potential developer interest in the property.