HUDSON–The Coarc Board of Directors has approved the sale of organization’s Promenade Hill Center day habilitation facility at 11 Warren Street to the Galvan Foundation.
Coarc issued a release Monday, January 27 that said the sale would be concluded by September 15, 2014. The sale price is $1.57 million for the 22,000-square-foot building and the property, which includes a parking lot.
Galvan spokesman Richard Scalera, a county supervisor and former Hudson mayor, said this week by email that the foundation does not yet have specific plans for the building.
Coarc currently provides services to 60 people with disabilities at the Promenade Hill Center. Coarc Executive Director Ken Fall said the number of people receiving services was down from 100 a few years ago and “the building is bigger than what we need.”
Coarc, a non-profit agency that serves 500 people, also cited increased maintenance costs anticipated “changes” in state funding for habilitation facilities.
In the release, Coarc said the organization would work with those individuals and their families “to determine which new option for day habilitation they would like to pursue.” There will be no staff cuts associated with the sale, Mr. Stall said in a phone interview Tuesday, January 28.
“We are committed to continuing to provide all the necessary supports and services to everyone who currently attends the Promenade Hill Center,” Mr. Stall said in the release.
Coarc plans call for continuing to provide services without interruption using other Coarc day habilitation programs, developing individual and small group community-focused “without walls” day habilitation options, and expanding Coarc’s Cardinal Hall day habilitation program on Prospect Avenue in Hudson.
Mr. Stall said that money from the sale must first reimburse the state for any funding it provided for the purchase and remodeling of the Promenade Hill Center. He estimated the center, a former market that he estimated was built in the 1970s, was purchased by Coarc in the “early ’80s.”
Coarc also has mortgages on the building to pay off. What remains after all debts are settled will be used to support the people who will transfer to other Coarc facilities and to renovate office space at Coarc headquarters in Mellenville and at a Coarc facility on Second Street, where staff now at the Warren Street building will relocate.
Mr. Scalera said that when Coarc recently offered the building to the foundation, Galvan considered it as a possible site for the Hudson City School District’s Bridge Academy Alternate Transition Program (ATP) high school. That program is scheduled to open next week at 364 Warren Street (see story in this edition), a temporary space. In the meantime other options for the alternate school’s future have been identified, he said.
As for what’s next at 11 Warren Street, Mr. Scalera said, “I’m sure over the next eight months before Coarc will move, plenty of ideas will surface as in the case of almost every Galvan owned building.”
The foundation and its principal, T. Eric Galloway, have purchased many properties in Hudson over the last few years, among them the current Hudson Area Library building and the former armory where the library expects to move.
More about Coarc, a chapter of NYSARC, Inc., is at www.coarc.org or 518 672-4451.
To contact Parry Teasdale email pteasdale@columbiapaper.com.