City asks town to take back Colonel Ledyard School
Groton — Groton City has asked the Town Council to terminate its lease of the former Colonel Ledyard School, and councilors said this week they would consider putting the property up for sale.
The town owns the empty school at 120 West St. but had leased it to the city for $1 as potential future municipal office space. The city had planned to use it, but timing and budget constraints forced the city to halt plans for renovations, Mayor Keith Hedrick said in a June 7 letter to Town Manager Mark Oefinger.
“As the site has remained unoccupied for several years with no anticipated future use by the city, we would like to exercise the terms of the lease agreement ... and ask the town of Groton to consider termination of the lease by way of mutual agreement,” Hedrick wrote. The topic also came up in April 2016, under former City Mayor Marian Galbraith.
Town Councilors said Tuesday that if the lease were terminated, they likely would put the property up for sale.
The school was the subject of a blight complaint filed in March 2016 over “boarded up windows, broken windows with glass exposed, graffiti and construction material stored on the front basketball court area.”
Carlton Smith, the city building and zoning official, said Thursday that the windows were boarded up more tightly after the complaint and that the glass was cleaned up.
Town councilors said they’d want assurance that the town would be held harmless for blight before assuming control of the property again. Councilor Deborah Peruzzotti said her fear is the town would take the property back and then be held responsible for its condition.
“I want to know who’s going to clean up that property before I agree to do that. They have public works. They can go and clean up the blight,” she said.
“The way we gave it to them is the way they should give it back,” Councilor Rich Moravsik said. He also said any equipment or materials stored in the school should be removed before the town takes it back.
Groton has closed four schools over the past decade and closed a fifth this week, reducing the number of schools from 14 to 9. Pleasant Valley Elementary School closed at the end of the school year on Thursday.
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