Crowley deal almost at hand as dealership building comes down

The former Crowley auto dealership on Pine Street lay in rubble Wednesday, torn apart by two massive cranes that smashed walls, crushed bricks and ground cinderblocks into dust.
Just a bit of a back wall remained standing, painted gray on one side, blue on the other, with a green stripe.
City officials said that razing the structure was the final step toward completion of a $2.25 million deal for taxpayers to buy the lot for one of two new schools Bristol hopes to open by 2015.
The sale agreement, which calls for Crowley to deliver a clean site, should be signed next week, according to city Councilor Mike Rimcoski, who serves on the Forestville School Building Committee.
“This thing has dragged on way too long,” Rimcoski said.
Mayor Art Ward said that Crowley had to demolish the former dealership before the city could take ownership of the land.
The city is pushing the $132 million plan to create two new kindergarten to eighth grade schools that would replace four older buildings. One would sit next door to the site of the existing Greene-Hills School, which would be knocked down once the new building is erected beside it.
The other school site, on the corner of Matthews Street and Clark Avenue, is likely to be purchased soon as well, officials said.
The state would pick up 74 percent of the purchase price for each site as long as the overall project isn’t derailed for failing to come in on time.
Unless Bristol can get exemption from existing rules, the city must have a construction contract in hand by June 13, 2010 in order to preserve the reimbursement rate for the project as a whole.
When the two new schools open, about half of the city’s students will attend K-8 schools and the rest will continue to follow the existing elementary to middle school track.
The Forestville school panel plans to recommend the hiring of a construction manager at a special meeting Monday, Rimcoski said.

Update on Thursday morning:

Dale Clift, the city attorney, told me this morning the deal with Crowley should be wrapped up within a week.

"It took awhile to hammer out the details," Clift said, because the city took a "super cautious" stance.

One complicating issue is the the "Crowley dealership" consisted of four parcels, each owned by some business entity controlled by Ken Crowley. It's harder to work everything out for four pieces of land than one.

In any case, the city has signed the contract. Crowley will soon. Then that property will be in the city's hands.

As for the West Bristol school site, Clift said that officials and the property owners are still negotiating about the price. That's the hangup there, but with Crowley out of the way, officials will focus on resolving it as soon as possible.

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Copyright 2009. All rights reserved.
Contact Steve Collins at scollins@bristolpress.com