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Dedham

Vote set on plan to buy school site for town hall

A plan for a municipal campus in Dedham centered around the historic Ames Schoolhouse is heading to a Town Meeting vote next month.

The town issued a letter of intent accepted by building owner Robert Alevizos late in March to buy the 116-year-old building at 450 Washington St., currently occupied by various businesses and other tenants, for $5.85 million. The assessed value of the building is $4 million, according to selectmen. Subject to Town Meeting approval, the sale would move forward by July 1, according to the letter.

That would force the building’s 13 commercial tenants to find new accommodations as their leases run out.

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“The town would be the landlord until the tenants relocated,” Board of Selectmen chairman Michael Butler said at a meeting on March 27, adding that all current leases would be honored and that the town would pay for moving expenses.

At the meeting, Butler presented a plan that would adapt the former schoolhouse into a town hall and senior center by March 2017. The current town hall on Bryant Street would then be expanded and converted into a police station by September 2018.

The estimated cost, including tenant moving expenses, would be $28.25 million, all of which would be paid through the Robin Reyes Memorial Fund, which is fed through local meals and hotel/motel taxes, according to Butler. Property taxes would not be increased, he said.

The price is nearly identical to a proposal voted down by Town Meeting in November to buy and renovate a building on Rustcraft Road for a town hall, senior center, and police station.

If approved by Town Meeting, Riverside Community Care, the primary tenant in the Ames Schoolhouse, would be the most affected by the town’s plan, according to the organization’s founder, president, and chief executive officer, Scott Bock. The organization’s lease ends in 2015, he said.

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“We don’t want to stand in the way of what the town needs for the town hall,” Bock said in a phone interview Wednesday. “We just need to understand what happens next.”

Bock said Alevizos had not communicated with him about the future of the building and had sent a letter months earlier stating there was no deal with the town.

Riverside Community Care is a community-based mental health service provider to 70 communities in the state as well as part of the state’s trauma response team, dealing with the aftermath of tragedies like the Boston Marathon bombings last April, Bock said.

Riverside’s administrative offices are in the Ames Schoolhouse. Dedham is a central location for the organization, and Bock said he hoped the organization could stay in the town. Riverside has 100 employees working in the building and has been there for 20 years, he said. The office space required would be 20,000 square feet, he said.

At the same time, Bock said the Ames Schoolhouse would be well suited for a town hall, which Butler said is the Board of Selectmen’s top choice for a use for the building formerly owned but later sold by the town decades ago.

“A lot of people come to this building thinking it’s the town hall,” Bock said.

Asked for comment Wednesday, Alevizos said he had been traveling and had not had a chance to notify tenants of the letter of intent with the town. He said he intended to communicate with all of his tenants that day.

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“When this started several months ago, I told the tenants I had no intention of selling the building and that I was going to talk about leasing, but the town made me an attractive offer so things changed,” Alevizos said.

He said he had mixed feelings about selling the historic building, which was built as a school in 1898 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. But he said he believes the sale is a good deal for him and for the town.

Tenant Mary Ellen Michaels, whose business, Diamond Advanced Components, has been in the building for six years, said the building required work.

“I hope they know what they are getting into,” Michaels said. “It’s a great old building and it has lots of character, but as far as sinking money into it, it is the classic money pit, I would think.”

Ellen Halpern, co-owner of tenant company Myotech Combined Therapies, said the building would not be appropriate for a senior center in its present condition.

“We plug in things and we blow fuses all the time,” Halpern said.

Robert O’Toole, president of another tenant business, Informed Eldercare Decisions, said he would be inconvenienced by the sale but supported the concept.

A Dedham resident, O’Toole said the police and fire stations need to be upgraded and the town needs a senior center, which it currently lacks. All of that could be accomplished through the purchase of the Ames Schoolhouse, he said.

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“This plan to me makes the most sense of any I’ve seen,” O’Toole said in an interview Tuesday.

O’Toole said there was plenty of nearby office space for lease for a small business like his, though he said the parking situation at the Ames Schoolhouse would be difficult to match.

Steven Boozang, an attorney whose office is in the building, said he had already found a new office across the street and planned to move immediately.

“An appraiser came in, and when an appraiser comes in, the writing is on the wall,” Boozang said Tuesday. “I went out and started pounding the pavement.”

Selectmen said a plan would go before Town Meeting on May 19 to purchase the building.


Dave Eisenstadter can be reached at eisen.globe@gmail.com.