Tear it down, or keep it for now? What to do with the vacant Cotuit Elementary School?

Keep it for now, or tear it down? Those are the two options for the future of the former Cotuit Elementary School that village residents will consider at a special meeting of the Cotuit Fire District on Saturday, May 4.

The meeting is at 1 p.m. in the community room at the Cotuit Federated Church at 40 School St. in Cotuit.

There are two items on the meeting warrant. One, recommended by the fire district Prudential Committee, would allocate $1.1 million to demolish the 69-year-old school building at 140 Old Oyster Road. The other, proposed by a citizen petition and not recommended by the committee, calls for using previously approved funds to study the feasibility and estimate the cost of rehabilitating all or part of the building.

The school, built in 1955, was closed as a local elementary school in 2009. The private Waldorf School of Cape Cod used the space until 2019, before moving to Sandwich. The building was then declared surplus and has been vacant ever since. Last year, the property was transferred from the town of Barnstable to the Cotuit Fire District.

Village governing committee: Tear it down

Prudential Committee Chairwoman Frances Parks said the property's condition makes rehabilitation financially untenable, in the opinion of the committee members.

The building needs about $4 million to make it habitable, Parks said.

"We're not interested in having the voters of the village of Cotuit support that."

According to the committee, the building has extensive water damage from roof leaks, and there are ceiling tiles and moldy insulation coming down onto the floors.

Further, she said, the interior of the building was recently severely damaged by vandals, whose identities remain unknown.

"Windows were broken, they destroyed the emergency lighting, they took a sledgehammer and destroyed toilets and sinks, and they found a box of fluorescent replacement bulbs and they're broken all over the building," she said.

Increased monitoring of the building

While the future of the building remains undecided, the district has increased monitoring with the addition of heat sensors and motion detectors, "so if anybody comes in a window it's going to set an alarm off," Parks said.

She said the district already has about $600,000 of the estimated demolition cost available and would need to raise funds or borrow them to cover any remaining cost.

Should voters go with the option to demolish the building, Parks said the plan would be to keep the site as open space. Since it's just 400 or 500 feet from one of the village's water wells, she said, "this would be to further protect that well."

Citizens group: Restore, repurpose and reimagine

A group of villagers who have formed the Cotuit Community Center nonprofit are hoping there is still a chance to save all or part of the building to provide the village with a much-needed place for community activities and gatherings. Their proposal asks voters to proceed with a study of possible future uses and options, including demolition.

"What the citizen petition is asking for is time," said John Havel, a member of the organization's board.

At the 2021 annual district meeting, he said, voters approved transferring $207,500 to reopen and fund a district space needs project to include the school.

"This did not happen and, since then, villagers have been granted extremely limited access to the building itself for observation or volunteer maintenance due to 'safety concerns,' making educated discussion difficult," Havel said.

The citizens group estimates the maintenance cost of the building is around $15,000 per year, "or roughly $6 per year for each of the 2,500 taxpayers in Cotuit," according to Havel, which he said "is a small price compared to the estimated $1.1 million cost of tearing it down. So why the rush?"

The town last November gave a different estimate — of $35,000 per year — "for simply maintaining the property."

"This isn’t about demolition versus some pie-in-the-sky dream of a community center with farmer’s market and indoor basketball court," Havel said. "This is a vote about reiterating the will of the majority of fire district voters from the 2021 Article 17."

The ultimate goal of the citizens group "is to create a community center of sorts which can provide programming and services based on villagers' desires and needs," Havel said, "but maybe we just keep the extremely popular and beautifully built gym, leave it as is for a few years to see if anything changes, or use it for something entirely different."

"In the end, it comes down to whatever people want and if that’s to tear it down, so be it," he said. "We just want to slow down and think about it before committing to replacing the school with a field."

Heather McCarron can be reached at hmccarron@capecodonline.com, or follow her on X @HMcCarron_CCT

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Vacant Cotuit Elementary School: Demolish or repurpose?