Greenwich Board of Education Okays $250,000 for Havemeyer Relocation Study

At their last meeting the Greenwich Board of Education voted 7-1 to approve an interim request for $250,000 to fund a “Havemeyer relocation study.”

The funds would be for architectural and engineering work related to the potential relocation of the Board of Education administration, Facilities, Food Services, IT, and Warehouse operations, which are all currently located in the building.

The offices have been located in the historic Havemeyer building at 290 Greenwich Ave, for decades. The building dates back to 1892 and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The building is in poor condition and in need of costly renovations. In 2023 a flood in the building caused significant damage.

“And this $250,000 would answer the question, could you do something behind Town Hall that would be more cost effective and frankly for the BOE staff to finally put our staff into a building they deserve to be in where they can do their good work for GPS.” – Greenwich Schools Superintendent, Dr. Toni Jones

The district’s Chief Financial and Administrative Officer Ben Branyan told the school board that the relocation has been a topic of discussion in the capital budget for years.

He noted that this year the First Selectman’s budget included some funds for the effort, but it wasn’t approved by the Board of Estimate and Taxation on decision day.

Instead, the BET suggested that the BOE seek an interim appropriation.

Timeline

• In May 2024, the first Selectman was eager to move Administration to a privately owned office space rental. The annual rental fee for space by the Greenwich train station was about $2.8 million, excluding utilities. The first six months of rent would be free, and there would be no rent increases for the first three years.

• Then, an RFP was issued and a committee formed to evaluate responses.

• In June 2025, the committee unanimously picked as their favorite of six: “Eagle/Peebles” proposal that included renovating and converting the historic building into a 71-room boutique hotel, restaurant, and event space. There would be an addition in the building’s north-west corner.

• The Eagle/Peebles included an “optional” new building for the BOE in the adjacent parking lot that the BOE could rent.

The RFP committee’s top choice, “Eagle/Peebles includes an optional building with two levels of parking plus two levels of office that the BOE could rent.

Branyan said $250,000 would fund evaluation and preliminary A&E work to assess options to accommodate Board of Education operations and due diligence on whether or not the space needs would be met.

Branyan said one proposal was to connect to town hall.

He added that existing funds were already being used to update a square footage analysis from a few years ago, noting there had been some change in staffing at central office.

“The timeline works really well. We should have by end of May our analysis of exact square footage analysis,” Branyan said.

Temporary modular structures in Horseneck Lot were first used for

Branyan said one proposal was to connect to town hall.

He also talked about moving Facilities to the modular buildings in the Horseneck Parking lot across from the Greenwich Boys & Girls Club.

“Were working on that and Horseneck as well. That is a completely different project if we pursue that,” Branyan said. “In order to move our office operations you have to move our Facilities operations. It’s difficult to find office space plus facilities space. You need to bifurcate those two.”

This modular buildings have been used for swing space for a variety of purposes starting with temporary fire dept headquarters in 2011, and most recently for the Boys & Girls Club during their renovation.

The P&Z has emphasized when the Club sought approval to use the modulars that they were supposed to have been temporary and been demolished years ago.

BOE member Karen Hirsh said she and Sophie Koven had served on the Havemeyer RFP committee that reviewed responses and presented a report to the Board of Selectmen with recommendations (Page 2).

“We’ve done the work to figure out what space allocations we need without having an architect do it. I’m not really keen to add a request for a quarter million dollars to do this when there isn’t even a proposal in writing from the Town, from the Board of Selectmen,” Hirsh said. “This is rushing to ask for money for something we may not even necessarily need.”

Hirsh said approving the $250,000 would be “jumping the gun” without having any proposal from Town in writing.

“This is the first time I’m hearing about a discussion of a building that might go behind town hall – to attach….We’ve repeatedly asked them to do a study to see if there is any room at Town Hall,” Hirsh added. “We’ve been asking them for that for at least a year and a half.”

Ms Koven said she was in favor of doing whatever would move forward with having a building designed and built.

“I share your frustration Karen, that we did meet – the Havemeyer committee met 14 times – and we had a robust document with recommendations for the Town and it was a bi-partisan committee that was headed up by Andy Duus.”

“I do hope the town is going to proceed with some of the recommendations that were in that report. I think the most important one was that it was extremely clear, and if anyone attended our meeting, the public was very unhappy, they wanted to have a lot more public input in what would happen to the Havemeyer building.”

Dr. Jones said she was a huge advocate for getting the administrative offices out of Havemeyer.

“This is probably the biggest step we’ve made in all the years we’ve been talking about Havemeyer. Anybody in the workforce now, how many of you work in a space that has no air? How many of you work in a space that has boards on some of the windows?”

Tile mosaic inside the Havemeyer building features the date of the building’s completion. May 21, 2024 Photo: Leslie Yager

“We need to start investing, we can’t just sit on this issue and say we’re going to do something. We were not part of the discussion when the First Selectman put it in his budget, but I thought it was bold that he did it. He got a conversation started and whether it was possible to expand behind Town Hall.”

Jones said there was not enough space inside Town Hall to consolidate all the admin staff have and the parking and everything else that comes with an organization of its size.

She said the BET declined the funding and suggested the BOE instead come for an interim, which she said gave the BOE a voice.

“I think this could be a good exercise, great work, to give us good information and if there is a way that building a new building is actually going to be a cost savings,” she added. “It is very expensive to rent anything.

“Looking at the Horseneck building, a town owned asset that is sitting there. Why would we not do that? Looking for a facility locations is a lot like looking for a bus lot in Greenwich.

“And this $250,000 would answer the question, could you do something behind Town Hall that would be more cost effective and frankly for the BOE staff to finally put our staff into a building they deserve to be in where they can do their good work for GPS,” Jones said.

The board voted 7-1 to approved the interim request with Ms Hirsh voting no.