At a Town Council meeting on Jan. 17, the council received a positive report from the Planning and Zoning Commission (PZC) on the potential sale of the Pierson School. The town attorney will now review the language of the potential sale.

Last month, the Town Council unanimously voted to recommend the former Pierson School property be sold to developers HOPE Partnership Inc. and Xenolith Partners LLC for $500,000.

The developers are proposing to turn the former school into affordable housing with an eye toward seniors as well as space for senior programming needs.

Following the announcement, per state law, the Town Council needed to make a referral to the PZC for a report on whether or not the possible real estate action complied with the town’s Plan of Conservation and Development. The PZC unanimously voted the potential sale did comply at a meeting earlier this month.

At the meeting on Jan. 17, Town Manager Karl Kilduff said that the next step was for the town attorney to review the language of the potential sale. Once the language is ironed out, a special town meeting will need to be scheduled so that voters can approve or reject the potential sale.

The Developers

Citing the experience of Xenolith Partners and HOPE partnership in housing development, Kilduff said last month, “They delivered a fully formed vision for the property, the role it would play on the community, and a community space plan which worked well with the council’s vision.”

According to its website, HOPE Partnership was founded in 2003 and “ is a non-profit organization dedicated to developing affordable workforce housing opportunities in Middlesex County and along the shoreline.”

Tony Lyons, the president of the organization’s board, said that the partnership has had an interest in Pierson for a number of years.

“This is a great day; it will deliver a lot for the town,” Lyons said after the council meeting last month.

Lyons said that the plan is for HOPE Partnership and Xenolith Partners LLC, a New York-based affordable housing development company, to form a joint LLC that will own the building.

Lyons said that the proposed affordable housing to be offered on the property would be with a preference for seniors. Lyons said programming space for seniors would be managed by the Estuary, an Old Saybrook-based non-profit that serves senior citizens in the area.

Though the proposal calls for the building to be sold, the façade of the building, the lawn, the statues, and the gazebo would be preserved for town use.

“The public has had a cry for senior housing and not to demolish the school. Our plan is to address those concerns and satisfy the townspeople by preserving a really important landmark,” said David Carswell, a board member with HOPE partnership.

Even with the recommendation made by the council, it will still be a while before anything happens with the property. Assuming residents pass the sale at a town meeting, Lyons said the developers would need to go to the state for financing, which could take years.

Additionally, when the town closed the school five years ago, a new wrinkle was discovered: the deed of the property. When the Morgan Fund Trustees sold the property to the town in 1953, a deed on the property from the sale stated that the premises must always be used for the education interests of the residents.

Since 2019, the town has been pursuing ongoing legal action, officially called a cy pres, which would lift the deed restriction. Town officials learned about the deed restriction after the decision to close the school in 2018. Then-First Selectman Christine Goupil estimated the cy pres action wouldn’t take longer than 18 months, nor would the school be vacant for long. Five years later, the cy-pres is still going on, and the school is vacant.

In March of 2022, the Town Council unanimously agreed to a resolution that would pay the Morgan Trust $75,670 to help remove the deed restriction. The Connecticut Attorney General’s Office needs to approve the payment, but since both the town and the trust are in agreement of the exchange, it’s hopeful the state won’t object.

Kilduff said undoing the deed restriction is an ongoing process. “The deed restriction still needs to be addressed, and this was disclosed to potential developers as part of the Request for Proposal (RFP) process. This process and an identified use help inform the process to address the deed restriction,” Kilduff said.

The Pierson School would not be the first former school to be sold by Clinton recently. In 2020, the town officially closed on a deal to sell the former Morgan School site where Big Y now stands to a developer for over $2 million.

Kilduff said that there are several differences between the two properties that account for the difference in potential sale price, the most obvious being that the Morgan School was 38.8 acres, but Pierson is only 3.62 acres.

“One sale was free-and-clear, and the other involves more of a partnership with the town to deliver a specific type of development. When the Morgan School site was sold, there were no restrictions on the use of the site or encumbrances for the developer to manage other than a liability to remediate hazardous materials (e.g., asbestos) that were part of the construction of the building. The developer was given a free hand to re-envision the property,” Kilduff explained.

“The sale of Pierson is completely different. It is much more of a partnership between the town and the developer. In its RFPS, the town was specific to the type of preferred use as well as the community beneficiaries and benefits from the development. We were looking for a partner to help refine and fulfill the vision for the site. As such, the town was limiting the type of use. The town limited the use further to affordable housing aimed at senior citizens, which provides for a public purpose on the site and limits the income a developer can generate. This limits the pool of developers to those skilled in this special type of development,” Kilduff continued.

Additionally, Kilduff explained that the town requested items like keeping the existing building intact to keep the façade and retaining the part of the property with the lawn, gazebo, and statues for community use.

“The town wanted to maintain an access easement on the site for the benefit of the abutting church, which was agreed to as part of this transaction. Finally, the town wanted to explore the possibility of a partnership with a developer for part of the interior space. With this decision, the town’s partnership will provide interior space and the school gym as space to provide for senior programming. As a result, the town will be receiving a significant benefit at the end of the construction phase,” Kilduff said.

Years in the Making

Finding a new use for the Pierson school has been a task five years in the making.

In November 2018, Clinton’s Board of Education voted to close the Pierson school at the end of the 2019 school year after 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. The school housed the district’s fourth and fifth graders at the time and had been open for 80 years.

Since the school closed, much speculation and debate has been about what should happen with the property. The Town Council had regularly discussed Pierson over the last two years, but much of the discussion took place in executive session, meaning there was little that could be publicly stated until now.

Over the years, the town hosted public workshops, conducted an engineering study, and held a public feedback session related to the future use of the school. The town put out a REFP earlier in 2023 to gauge interest in redeveloping the property, which received three responses. The Town Council then spent the next few months evaluating the proposals until publicly announcing its recommendation at the meeting on Dec. 20.

“The decision reached on Dec. 20 reflects the hard work and commitment of all the members of the last Town Council and the current council to bring this to a successful conclusion. Everyone’s perspectives, input, and time commitment over many months made this possible,” Kilduff said.