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Housing Authority Buys State Building on Metacom
The Warren Housing Authority has purchased the former NetworkRI building at 470 Metacom Ave. for $856,000, and plans are to convert it into senior housing, housing for the handicapped, or some combination of the two.
The authority purchased the vacant building from the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training, and closed on the sale the last week of July. Warren Housing Authority Board of Directors Chairman Frank Mansi said there is no concrete plan yet for the building, though it will eventually become housing.
“We’re not pinpointing a particular use for it,” Mr. Mansi said Monday. “We’re going to have someone go in there, take a look at it and come up with measurements. Then we’ll see; right now we just want to clean it up a little bit.”
Money for the purchase came from a reserve account the authority has built up over the years. Hopefully, Mr. Mansi said, grants will be found to help rehabilitate the property.
The purchase ends months of speculation over what would happen to the building, which closed earlier this year. Initially, state officials planned to sell the property at a no reserve public auction in early April. But after a host of bidders, including the housing authority, bid the property up to $775,000 on Wednesday, April 9, state attorneys overseeing the auction declined to sell at that price.
After the auction collapsed, labor and training officials said they were going to take time to consider what to do with the property. They were apparently still considering the building’s fate when Warren Housing Authority members approached them just over a month ago and offered to buy the property outright.
“We went to them and said, look, let’s do this,” said Mr. Mansi. “This is an ideal piece for us, it borders our own property. It’s good for us.”
Housing authority members have said the commercial building is ideal for several reasons. It has plenty of parking — between 88 and 108 spaces, according to the Department of Labor and Training — sits on just over an acre of land and covers between 7,480 and 8,160 square feet of building space. It is assessed by the Town of Warren at $1.026 million, and is in a village business zone. Another great thing, added Mr. Mansi, is that it borders the authority’s Kickemuit Village housing development, which has a two and a half to three-year waiting list. From that respect, he said, it would be a natural place to build other similar housing.
Mr. Mansi said there have been a lot of rumors flying about since the sale became official, but they’re not true:
“We’re not going to turn that into a community building, or our front offices. It will be housing,” he said.
Eastbayri.com