Selectmen ponder clearing space at Venus building
Would the selectmen throw the schools’ central offices out of the Venus building? Well, they were talking about it.
A conversation that wandered down an unexpected path, perhaps, but the basic thinking is that the Playhouse wants the space currently occupied by the school offices, and would pay for it, while the Playhouse’s sudden need for office space might motivate the school board to face up to its declining student population and rethink how its roughly 5,000 students are spread among 10 buildings — the high school, the alternative high school, two middle schools, and six elementary schools.
“We have a request from the Ridgefield Playhouse to expand the lobby into the Board of Education space,” First Selectman Rudy Marconi said Monday.
“They need it,” said Selectwoman Barbara Manners.
“To do fund raising,” Marconi added, “… a larger area to do meet-and-greets.”
As part of the plan, the Playhouse might also be interested in renting space at the south end of the Venus building as offices.
The schools’ K-12 enrollment is 4,996, after a decade of steady decline from 5,541 in 2005-06. Projections anticipate a continued decline to 4,318 in 2023-24 before it’s expected to start rising again.
“The continued decline in RPS enrollment requires long-range strategic planning,” Superintendent Karen Baldwin told the school board in a Nov. 9 memo. She recommended studies on a number of tracks, from “grade configuration” and “redistricting at the middle school level” to “a facility utilization study to learn true operational capacity” and “target utilization at the K-5 level.”
But studies take time, and making decisions that would be disruptive — redistricting, maybe closing a school — is hard. The selectmen have to think about the Venus Building now.
The idea of moving the school board came up Monday, during a meeting designed to give selectmen new to the board an overview of varied town affairs. It began with discussion concerning the Ridgefield Visiting Nurse Association’s plans to move out of the space at the south end of the Venus building next year. The RVNA’s target date to move is March 2016.
“It’s soon, 60 days!” said Selectman Steve Zemo.
The RVNA’s move sets up what potentially looks like a game of musical rental space.
“They want to expand and take the area the Board of Education is in,” Marconi said of the Playhouse. “Chef’s Warehouse wants to expand and take over the area where the VNA is. In their lease they have the right of first refusal on any space that becomes available.”
The RVNA rents a sizable ground floor area at the south end of the building, and a smaller amount of space above, where there are also several other tenants, many paying reduced rates or no rent at all: Kumon Math, Loosen Up Massage Therapy, and the Ridgefield Symphony Orchestra are paying customers, with the orchestra at a reduced rate. Non-paying occupants include Ridgefield Adult Education, the Ridgefield Youth Service Bureau, and MCCA, a regional organization that battles alcohol and drug abuse.
Marconi said Chef’s Warehouse President Chris Pappas has said the company wants to expand into the first floor space at the south end of the building, and might take the second floor as well, even if only to hold on to it for future needs.
“Chris definitely wants the first floor,” he said.
One possibility floated at the meeting would be to rent the Board of Education’s space to the Playhouse, put the school offices on the second floor at the south end of the building, and rent the south end ground floor to Chef’s Warehouse. It would require improving the elevator at the south end of the building and creating a visually appealing entranceway.
“Do we take the entrance to the elevator and dress it up, and put the Board of Education on the second floor?” Marconi said.
But the Playhouse has also said it’s interested in office space on the second floor of the south end. If the school offices weren’t in there, the town could have the Playhouse and Chef’s Warehouse — both expected to pay market rates — in the area where the RVNA is moving out.
In either case, the smaller second-floor tenants could be moved if necessary — perhaps to space in the basement, the realm of shop classes, when the building was the old high school — or simply told to move out
“The real question is the schools,” Marconi said.
Former Board of Education Chairman Austin Drukker, he said, had theorized that when the student population fell enough, the school offices could move into Scotland School, the smaller of two elementary buildings that share a site, giving the town more rental area at the Venus building.
“The thought was, move part of Scotland into Barlow, put kindergarten in there, and use the rest of the space” for the offices, Marconi said.
With enrollment declining, school officials are looking at a variety of interesting reconfiguration options, some involving the middle school buildings, others the elementary schools. But it’s not clear when they might be ready to move the school offices out of the Venus building.
“I think we should have the superintendent in to talk to us,” Zemo said.
“No matter what scenario you come up with, it comes down to the Board of Education,” Marconi said.
The idea came up of simply telling the school board it had to be out by a certain date, to make way for paying tenants — focusing their thinking with a target date.
“They’re paying a better rate than the other town tenants are,” said Selectwoman Maureen Kozlark.
“They sure are,” said Marconi. “They’re not paying.”
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