Of Tough Pills and Medical Centers

Charter school signs lease
Former Medical Center building to house school
By Patrick Anderson
Staff Writer

The Gloucester Community Arts Charter School has signed — and this time the landlord has accepted — a lease that will allow the school to open its doors in the Blackburn Industrial Park building recently vacated by the Cape Ann Medical Center.

The building at 2 Blackburn Drive was the charter school's second choice location, targeted only after a deal to lease space in the William G. Brown Building on Pleasant Street fell through in January.

Like the proposed deal for space in Brown's Mall, the former medical center building lease will be for 15 years with an average annual rent of around $406,000.

But unlike Brown's Mall, the Blackburn space does not fulfill the goal of charter founders to be downtown and within walking distance of the city's primary cultural institutions.

The main advantages of the new site are for drivers.

A lack of off-street parking and a dedicated bus drop-off were major concerns for the Brown's Mall location. Blackburn is built for automobiles and charter officials yesterday promised plenty of parking and easy pick-up.

The Blackburn site will also allow the school to provide plenty of outdoor recess space for students and a larger gym than Brown's Mall.

After weeks of rumors that they were close to a deal, the charter school board of trustees announced they had signed a lease for Brown's Mall.

But it became clear within a few days that the owners of that building, the Montagnino family, had not signed the deal and negotiations were stalled over the cost of renovations and parking.

In early February, charter officials confirmed that the deal for Brown's Mall was dead and they had turned to a second choice "close to downtown," widely assumed to be the former medical center.

"I think it allows us to do a larger multipurpose space and there will be lots of outdoor play space here," said interim charter school Executive Director Matthew Gallup about being in Blackburn yesterday. "And parking is not an issue."

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