[CPEO-BIF] Woonsocket (RI) schools

[Lenny Siegel]

Hamlet Avenue site picked for new middle schools

Planned are two independent schools on a 20-acre site.

BY CYNTHIA NEEDHAM
Providence Journal (RI)
September 22, 2006

WOONSOCKET -- The city's long-awaited new middle schools will be located 
at what is now a sweeping mill complex along the Blackstone River off 
Hamlet Avenue.

The 20-acre site, best known in recent years for its massive mill fires, 
will feature two independent schools on either end of what will become 
an academic campus, with room for playing fields landscaping and parking 
lots in the middle.

...

The city has struggled to find new life for the old complex. While other 
former mills were reborn as condominiums and industrial space, the 
Hamlet Avenue complex sat mostly uninhabited with rehabilitation 
projects stalled on the issue of environmental cleanup -- developers 
didn't want to pay to remediate and the city could not afford to do so. 
Meanwhile, two mill fires have further damaged the run-down mills.

Were it to be repurposed as a school, the site could be remediated using 
state education funds. (The generous estimate cost for that cleanup, 
between $2.5 million and $4 million, is included in the $78.8 price tag).

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.projo.com/north/content/projo_20060922_wms22.30e9369.html

-- 
Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
http://www.cpeo.org