Want to buy a school? Natick to seek proposals for sale of Eliot lot
NATICK — Want to buy a school? Now might be your chance.
The town will soon be requesting proposals for the sale of 5 Auburn St., the former Eliot School in South Natick. The Select Board received a draft RFP — request for proposals — during its meeting Wednesday night, with tentative plans to advertise it sometime in August.
The former school is closed, but “still on the taxpayer’s dime, to the tune of some tens of thousands of dollars per year,” according to 5 Auburn Street RFP Committee Chair Andy Meyer.
“It’s a special property… considering where it’s located and when it was built,” he told the Select Board. “And we thought that instead of just taking an old RFP and just changing the dates, we thought that we would dig a little deeper than that.”
The property consists of approximately 2.84 acres in scenic South Natick, with a roughly 14,000-square-foot school building that was constructed in the 1920s and once housed the public Eliot School before the private Eliot Montessori School — now the Riverbend School at 33 Eliot St. — took over the space until mid-2020.
The parcel is within the John Eliot Historic District and may be eligible for permitting under Natick’s Historic Preservation Bylaw, according to the draft RFP. The site is zoned for residential general, which primarily allows for single- or two-family homes or nonprofit social or civic uses, but which can also include other uses — nursing homes or assisted living residences, for example — by special permit.
The 5 Auburn Street RFP Committee held multiple public meetings to invite community members to weigh in on what they would like to see the property become.
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“From that, it was fairly clear that if the neighbors and interested parties had their wish, they would like to see several things preserved at this particular site,” Meyer said.
For example, he said, neighbors wanted to see the facade preserved and the building used for something not “overly cumbersome” to the neighborhood.
At one outreach meeting in April, suggestions ranged from a community arts programming hub to affordable housing.
“We heard those concerns, and we felt it was very important to make room for an application, a response to the RFP, that includes affordable housing,” Meyer said, while noting that the committee didn’t want to limit responses to affordable housing.
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According to the draft RFP, a highly advantageous proposal would preserve the existing structure to the extent feasible, maximizing the amount and quality of open space at the site, particularly along Eliot Street. The proposed use would serve community needs or promote a public service, including affordable housing, educational and recreational facilities, and arts and cultural amenities, the RFP continued.
A proposal that meets many, but not all of that criteria and might create some negative or significant impacts to the surrounding community might merely be considered advantageous, according to the RFP.
Select Board members now have a few weeks to weigh in on the draft RFP. Deputy Town Administrator Jon Marshall said town leaders envision advertising the RFP sometime in August, allowing six or more weeks for responses to trickle in before considering proposals in mid- to late September.
Abby Patkin is a multimedia journalist for the Daily News. Follow Abby on Twitter @AMPatkin. She can be reached at apatkin@wickedlocal.com.
This article originally appeared on MetroWest Daily News: Natick MA to seek Eliot School buyers with August RFP
