“A bid is not a purchase,” Padalino said. “There’s a much longer process to this. A lot of bids have contingencies. This is a lawyer’s bailiwick, and they’ll muddle through this, hopefully sooner rather than later.”
The planned use of any building receiving a bid is also a factor, Padalino noted.
“There have been many different discussions about what would be done with the different properties,” he said. “Some people say they’d make it into senior housing, some people were saying they’d turn it into an artists’ community, some people were saying apartments. Other people were talking about retail. The board has to decide what their interest is in future building use, and that’s part of the process.”
Still, Padalino said, the hope is that the district will be able to make a sale on all three properties, with Anna Devine hopefully receiving a bid sometime in the future.
“Really, our goal is to get to closing,” he said.
State approval process begins for KHS project
Despite reports to the contrary, the Kingston City School District has yet to receive approval for their $137.5 million Kingston High School renovation plan. That approval, said Superintendent Paul Padalino, is months away. Still, Padalino said, there is optimism that the process is moving ahead as it should.
School officials met with the New York State Education Department last week to discuss the comprehensive renovation plan, which Padalino said was mostly about “introducing ourselves and familiarizing them with our project.”
The hurdles, such as they are, involve the give-and-take of an approval process with an understaffed agency.
“They’re short-staffed, but they’re very helpful, and we look forward to them guiding us through the process,” Padalino said. “I think they have three architects working on the whole state. Our architects and our construction management team are working to get it to them as quickly as possible so we can get in the queue. We’ve got about six to eight months of design and approval process ahead of us.” – Crispin Kott
whoa! ’tis an ill wind that blows nobody some good… fabulous piece of property… wonderful intersection…