BELFAST, Maine —The cat’s out of the bag, Belfast. Developer Paul Boghossian, responsible for the multi-million restoration of the historic Hathaway Mill in Waterville, has confirmed that he has a purchase-and-sale agreement for the long-vacant Crosby School in downtown Belfast.
“It’s a venerable old building, and certainly part of the history of Belfast,” Boghossian said last week. “Like the Hathaway in Waterville, we’re going to give a really good shot to saving the building.”
The Colby College graduate got his start by restoring mills in his home state of Rhode Island. In 2006 he purchased the massive Hathaway and Lockwood Mills properties along the Kennebec River in Waterville with an eye to rehabilitating them. Today, the brick Hathaway complex houses 67 apartments and 130,000 square feet of office and retail space.
Boghossian said he first considered developing the former Belfast high school about four years ago.
“I just couldn’t get the numbers to work. The price was too high,” he said.
But after the price dropped from nearly $2 million last year to less than $1 million this year, the numbers worked, Boghossian said, and he is eager to get started.
“We think there’s a huge need for housing in downtown Belfast,” he said. “If you want to live downtown, the options are pretty limited. We think there’s a market for nice apartments in Belfast. Not super luxury apartments, but nice ones.”
Thomas Kittredge, the Belfast economic development director, said Saturday that city officials are happy that Boghossian has stepped forward with an interest in the Crosby School.
“We’re very excited about the prospect of this coming to fruition,” he said. “Certainly the school has been vacant for a few years. People from this area have an emotional attachment to it and they hate to see a building of that character be underutilized.”
Boghossian said that the 38,000-square-foot former school likely would be converted to no more than 35 apartments. They’d be mostly two-bedroom and some one-bedroom, he said, and the monthly rent is likely to be “clustered around the $1,100 per month range” with the least expensive probably being less than $835 per month.
According to the developer, there is potential commercial use for the building’s auditorium space, but he’s not yet sure what that would be.
The Crosby School, built in 1923 as the city high school with funds raised by individual and city contributions, has a varied past. It was featured in the 1957 movie Peyton Place and remained a school until 1993. A few years later, the city sold the building for $200,000 to the National Theatre Workshop for the Handicapped, a New York City-based organization that reportedly spent $3.5 million to add theaters, lounges, apartments and an elevator to the building.
A few years ago, after it had fallen into disuse by the theater company, Belfast residents complained that the structure was not being maintained properly and was beginning to deteriorate. The city foreclosed on the school in 2010, after the theater workshop defaulted on a $700 sewer bill, but returned it the following year after Belfast City Councilors decided that the workshop had made a good-faith effort to repair and maintain the landmark structure.
Still, Boghossian said that it will be a major undertaking to bring the building back to life.
“It was outfitted to be a school, not as apartments,” he said. “And there’s potential for mold. That’s a big issue.”
He envisioned the renovation project costing at least $3 million and possibly more than $4 million, and would like to start construction in the spring of 2016.
“That would mean it would be ready sometime in the spring or summer of 2017,” he said.
Boghossian said that he has some issues to talk over with the city of Belfast, including the question of sufficient parking and the school’s property tax. The land and building currently is assessed by the city at $2.7 million and the annual property tax commitment is $58,630.
“The estimate of the building is quite high right now,” he said.
Boghossian said that it was the school’s downtown location that really sold him on its possibilities.
“I’ve predicated my whole business model on the idea that people want to live where they can walk to dinner,” he said. “Belfast is a great place to live, and people want to be there.”
In general, he said, he finds Maine a good place to do business.
“I love doing business in Maine,” Boghossian said. “It’s the kind of place where you can still do business with a handshake. It’s a kind of throwback, in a pleasant way.”
Kittredge said that city officials are looking forward to working with the developer.
“The city’s going to do what we can to support the project and give it the best chance for success,” he said.