Welch: Sherburne School workforce housing not likely to break ground before 2026

PORTSMOUTH — Portsmouth Housing Authority Executive Director Craig Welch said he remains optimistic the City Council will choose the local agency as its partner to develop workforce housing at the former Sherburne School property.

“I am optimistic about that, but what I don’t know is whether or not they’ll want to continue to ask for more information or postpone that decision,” Welch said during an interview Thursday. “They (the City Council) created the PHA to do this.”

Welch confirmed the Portsmouth Housing Authority was one of four nonprofits city staff interviewed after responding to a request for qualifications issued by the city for the project.

City staff interviewed PHA officials on July 15, Welch said.

Deputy City Manager Suzanne Wood told the council recently that city staff interviewed four of the eight groups – who they’ve described as finalists − that responded to the RFQ.

But even if the PHA gets “the green light on this” from the council in August, it will still take a fair amount of time before any proposed housing project at the former elementary school becomes a reality, Welch acknowledged.

Development of workforce housing 'takes a long time'

“It’s important to move forward in earnest, this stuff takes a long time, this is the first big step in getting the process started,” Welch said. “The ship has sailed for this year, and that’s just fine.”

While noting the city’s process for the potential workforce housing has been “thorough,” Welch acknowledged “we’re starting to run out of time for a 2025 project.”

“It takes a lot of time to design and permit and go through a proper process. We’ve been working on the Christ Church property project for over a year,” Welch said about a separate workforce housing project the PHA is working on off Route 1. “We will present to the Planning Board on Aug. 15 for that project. This stuff takes a while.”

How soon could housing be developed at Sherburne School?

In terms of a timeline to partner with the city to create workforce housing at Sherburne, Welch said “we want to be able to engage the community and provide some different options.”

He predicted that would include “going through the permitting process in the spring and then being able to assemble all the complex financing that is a part of doing something like this.”

“If we get the investors and the grants and funding by the end of 2025, hopefully then we’d be able to break ground in the second quarter of 2026,” Welch said. “That’s the reality of how long these things take, it’s neither good or bad, that’s what it is.”

Welch is hopeful the City Council makes its final decision on a development partner in August, and chooses the PHA.

“Then we can come up with some potential designs, and come up with a few options,” Welch said during an interview Thursday about where things stand now on the much discussed housing project. “That’s the appropriate process, not to continue to ask for additional proposals and still be extending the process.”

He pointed to the city’s goal of trying to develop 500 workforce or affordable housing units during the next decade.

“If we can get an agreement to move forward, then we can present a few different design options in terms of the number of units and the unit mix,” Welch said. “And then there’s the future of the school building itself.”

He added that he doesn’t “think anybody wants some kind of long, open-ended design by public meeting process that we had with the McIntyre process.”

“This should be made simple at every opportunity,” he said.

The former Sherburne School, which was built in 1930, has in recent years housed the Robert Lister Academy, the city’s alternative high school.

Lister Academy is moving to the city-owned Community Campus this fall, leaving the roughly 5-acre site at 35 Sherburne Road open for redevelopment.

The city dropped its efforts last year to redevelop the Sherburne property with PHA after receiving some pushback from residents of the nearby Pannaway Manor neighborhood.

City leaders renewed the effort this year and opened it up to proposals from multiple developers and non-profits.

The PHA has “already invested $100,000 so far in due diligence work at Sherburne at no cost to city taxpayers,” Welch said.

If the council picks PHA, the two can “start engaging the community again and come up with some design alternatives that people would be really excited about,” Welch said.

“There’s a lot of work to do between now and when construction starts,” he added.

The groups that responsed to the city’s RFQ included Portsmouth Housing Authority, Pennrose LLC of Boston, Avesta Housing Development Corporation in Portland, Maine, Preservation of Affordable Housing Inc., or POAH, from Boston, Avanru Development Group of Walpole, N.H., Tamposi Brothers Holdings LLC., of Hollis, the Housing Partnership of Portsmouth and GSD Communities of Durham.

During a council meeting earlier in July, Woodland said a “Selection Committee consisting of eight staff members” reviewed the responses and ranked them.

The top four teams were interviewed, Woodland said.

City declines to release names of other finalists

City administration has not yet released the names of the finalists to the public.

City Councilor Beth Moreau asked if the names of the finalists would be released at the council’s Aug. 5 meeting.

“It has not yet been determined whether it would make sense to share that information,” Woodland replied.

Woodland explained “our intention is to gather as much information as possible from the interview process, so that we can have a conversation with the City Council on Aug. 5, at your next City Council meeting, and say here’s what we’ve learned and here’s our recommended next steps, given what we’ve learned.”

City staff may recommend the city issue a request for proposals for the project, Woodland added.

Reached this week, Mayor Deaglan McEachern said he believes the council will make its final decision on a development partner in August or September.

“We want to make sure enough people are paying attention,” McEachern said.

He acknowledged there is “a strong demand for a project like this and more affordable housing projects in the future.”

He supports the idea of the city developing additional projects on city-owned land.

“There’s not a loser in this process, we’re looking to build a pipeline of partners who are willing to build more projects like this,” he said.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Sherburne School workforce housing in Portsmouth not likely before '26