Selectmen Scrap Two Bradstreet School Proposals

Selectmen voted 4-1 to eliminate a proposal by Coalition for a Better Acre to purchase the Bradstree School property. They also voted to scrap one of several proposals from Hearthstone.

Selectmen recently rejected an offer by Coalition for a Better Acre to purchase the property for moderate income apartments, citing the desire to see more retail space there.

Selectman Tracy Watson, who was the only selectman to vote in favor of that offer, suggested eliminating Coalition for a Better Acre Monday night, to save the organization time and energy.

"Are we really going to put the Coalition for a Better Acre through what we already put them through?" she asked. "Other than me, not one person on this board is going to vote for them."

Hearthstone Realty Corp. of Andover submitted four different proposals. Selectmen voted to scrap one of those proposals, which kept the school building intact but requested $200,000 in CPA funds.

One proposal in contention is that of

Proposals were also submitted by the following:

• Oakgrove Residential of Boston
• Water Street Retail LLC of Haverhill
• RCG LLC of Somerville

The RCG proposal was the subject of debate Monday. The proposal offers just $1 for the property and calls for two curbside commerical buildings on Main Street. It also reserved the right to make the entire Bradstreet building commercial and add a stand-alone residential building along Saunders Street.

"If you want to have them come here, fine, but I'm not going to vote for them," Selectman Don Stewart said. "That dollar figure eliminates them in my mind."

The uncertainty of RCG's proposal -- reserving rights to add to their plan later -- also seemed to make selectmen uncomfortable. But selectmen voted to allow RCG to come present their proposal anyway.

"RCG is a fantastic company, they do much bigger things than this," Watson said. "But just the pure bid of $1 for me kind of puts them out of the running."

Water Street Retail's proposal calls for the demolition of the school and all commercial space on the property -- 12,000 square feet of commercial space and 81 parking spaces. Stewart wanted to eliminate that proposal as well.

"I don't want to see the school come down, and I don't want to have to use any more preservation money," he said.