Erie School District to buy former medical building for new home for administration

The Erie School District is ready to buy a building to replace its 113-year old administration building at West 21st and Sassafras streets.

The offices will not move far. The district has reached a deal to buy a former medical offices building at West 19th and Sassafras streets, two blocks north of the current administration building.

The purchase price for the 20-year-old building is $2.8 million.

The Erie School Board authorized Erie schools Superintendent Brian Polito to pursue the deal, and the board is expected to approve the purchase at its monthly meeting on Wednesday night at East Middle School. The proposed deal is on the agenda, posted on Friday.

The purchase, if approved, will break the district's trend of selling buildings to raise money and to get surplus property off its books. But Polito said the deal makes financial sense for the district.

The district's architects estimate that renovating the current administration building would cost $13 million, according to district records. Polito said he and his staff looked into buying the former medical building as they were looking for alternatives to the costly repairs to the current building.

"This is an opportunity for us to save the district millions of dollars and move into a better building," Polito said.

Among other things, the current building needs a new roof, a new heating and ventilation system and repairs to a retaining wall on the north side of the building. The new HVAC system would cost $2.5 million and the new roof and repairs to the retaining wall $1 million each, for a total of $4.5 million for those three areas alone, according to district records.

The district is still exploring how much it will need to spend to make adjustments to the medical offices building, district officials said. But the cost of buying the medical offices building and altering it will be much less than renovating the current administration building, Polito said. The savings could be as much as $3.5 million to $5 million, according to the district.

"This move is going to save us millions of dollars rather than doing a renovation" of the current building, Polito said.

He said the district wants to move the offices to the new location sometime within the first three months of 2024.

The Erie School District is buying the building from an entity called ARHC SMERIPA01 LLC, based in New York City. It is subsidiary of a company called Healthcare Trust Inc., according to records with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission.

ARHC SMERIPA01 bought the building for $6.1 million in 2015, according to Erie County assessment records. Until several years ago, the building housed medical offices affiliated with Allegheny Health Network, which includes Saint Vincent Hospital in Erie.

How large is the new building?

The medical offices building is 28,500 square feet, according to assessment records. The Erie School district lists the square footage of its current building at 42,000.

The current building was never designed to be an office building, however. It opened in 1910 as the Erie School District's Washington School. It closed in 1976 and was sold to different owners before the school district repurchased it in 1999 for $1.2 million, plus another $200,000 for computers and furniture already in the building.

The district bought the building from Saint Vincent Health Center in 1999. Saint Vincent bought the building in 1982 and operated its school of nursing there.

The district needed the building for a new administration building. In 1999, it sold what had been its administration building, a former bowling alley at 1511 Peach St., to a group of social service agencies led by Perseus House. That sale price was $550,000, according to assessment records.

The school district undertook a number of structural changes at the current administration building, but the layout is still limited by the building's original use as a school. Polito said the new building, which features a large amount of glass, is more open and better for visitors.

"It is a good option for us," Polito said.

"The best part is that the public will able to access child accounting, special education departments much easier because of the way that building is laid out," said Neal Brokman, the assistant superintendent who handles building issues for the Erie School District. "There is ample parking. It overall will be a better opportunity for us as a district as well as the public."

How will the Erie School District pay for the new building?

The Erie School District had planned to renovate the current administration building as part of Polito's plan, launched in 2018, to make all the district's schools and other buildings "warm, safe and dry." The district had already planned to set aside money in its budget for improvements to the current building, but at the estimated cost of $13 million, Polito said.

The 10,000-student district had neglected its buildings for years as it struggled to stay financially solvent.

The situation changed in 2017, when the state General Assembly approved an additional state allocation of $14 million per year for the district going forward. That funding boost as well as other increases in state funding has allowed the district to end its financial crisis and start investing in its educational programs and buildings.

Under Polito's plan, the district has renovated a number of schools, including Erie High School, where the work is ongoing. The district is also building a new school to replace the aging Edison Elementary School on East Lake Road.

And though the building plans always called for the renovation of the current administration building, it has been focusing on the schools.

"Part of the reason it is falling apart is that we intentionally put money into our schools first," Polito said.

What will the Erie School District do with the current building?

The Erie School District plans to put its current administration building on the market soon after the district completes the purchase of the new building, Polito said. The current property includes parking lots, including a large unpaved overflow lot east of the building, toward Peach Street.

The building will be the last the district expects to have on the market for years to come.

The district in 2017 launched a plan to sell six unused properties. The last of those six properties on the market was the former Irving School, the sale of which the School Board is also scheduled to approve at Wednesday night's meeting. The district closed Irving School in 2012 due to declining enrollment.

The administration building will become the district's final unused property once the Irving sale goes through.

In its most recent sale, the School Board in February approved a deal to sell the former Burton School to the Urban Erie Community Development Corp. for $110,000.

Selling Burton School: Erie School Board OKs deal for neighborhood nonprofit to buy, revamp former Burton School

The district closed Burton, across from Rodger Young Park on Buffalo Road, at the same time as it closed Irving, also due to declining enrollment. Burton opened in 1894, making it one of the school district's oldest buildings.

Erie School Board also expected to OK sale of Irving

Irving opened in 1897. It covers 60,000 square feet and sits on approximately 2.3 acres at 2310 Plum St., just east of Washington Park. The school district also owns 1.77 acres, including a softball field, next to the school.

The School Board on Wednesday night will vote on two deals, according to the agenda. One is for the sale of the Irving property to Secured Storage LLC, an Erie self-storage business, for $150,000. Secured Storage in May got a zoning variance to operate in the neighborhood, which is zoned R-2, for medium density residential.

The other is deal is for the sale of the softball field to Erie Homes for Children & Adults, for $109,000. EHCA builds and manages group homes.

Selling Irving School: Zoning variance OK'd for self-storage business to operate at Erie's former Irving School

The school district had been asking as much as $449,000 for the Irving property. Several other offers fell through, and Polito said selling the property now is best for the district given the general lack of interest in the property from prospective buyers. He also said the district has discussed with EHCA the neighbors' desire to preserve green space near Irving School.

"They are very well aware of the neighbors' concerns," Polito said.

Contact Ed Palattella at epalattella@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ETNpalattella.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Ex-medical building to be new home for Erie School District officials