West Bristol school site likely chosen this month

A decision on where to put a new 900-student school in west Bristol is likely to come this month. Two members of the West Bristol School Building Committee – city Councilor Ken Cockayne and Board of Education member Chris Wilson – each said a site will be chosen when the panel meets on Jan. 28.
“That is the plan,” Wilson said Wednesday.
“At our meeting, we will have a site,” said Cockayne.
The committee has picked a site before, however, and had the City Council gun it down. It isn’t clear if there’s a consensus yet about where to put the proposed kindergarten to eighth grade building.
Among the locations eyed for a school are the former Roberts property on Chippens Hill, two sandpits off Barlow Street and a triangular section of land between Divinity and Park streets that contains 35 privately owned plots, including some commercial property.
Karen Pio, who owns commercial property at 331 Park St. that’s included in the potential school site, urged officials this week to make a decision one way or the other soon.
Pio said she’s losing $3,000 hanging on to the property because potential buyers are waiting to see what the city decides.
She said she doesn’t mind selling it to the city, if that’s the choice.
“I’ll be very reasonable, guys,” Pio told city councilors. “I do need to do something.”
The panel initially recommended a Barlow Street site that has housed a Scalia Construction sand pit for years. It has plenty of room for a school and playing fields, officials said.
But the City Council declined to back it because some members preferred the West End site that contains Pio’s property as well as a former grocery store.
While the school in west Bristol remains stalled, Board of Education member Tom O’Brien said Wednesday that a companion school in Forestville is moving ahead. He said solicitations for an architect will go out soon.
Officials have targeted the ex-auto dealership next door to Greene-Hills School for the new K-8 building. The city has yet to cut a deal with the owner to buy the land, however.
The school board aims to build both schools within the next four years and to close Memorial Boulevard Middle School and three aging elementary schools: Greene-Hills, Bingham and O’Connell.
As part of the project, there will be a massive redistricting throughout the city as student are shuffled to fill the new buildings.
When they are built, some schools in the city will offer K-8 programs and others will maintain the existing elementary and middle school configurations.
The West Bristol School Building Committee is scheduled to meet at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 28 in room 36 at the Board of Education building on Church Street.


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Copyright 2008. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com