RTM: Down With Cohanzie School

Cohanzie School better enjoy these next few months. Because they are going to be the 90-year-old building’s last.

Monday night, Waterford’s Representative Town Meeting approved a $463,100 appropriation – paid for through a state grant - to knock down Cohanzie School. The elementary school has sat vacant since its students were consolidated into the new Quaker Hill Elementary School in 2008.

First Selectman Dan Steward said he hopes to have the school leveled by the fall, as he said the property is worth more without the building than with it. He said the town still needs to bid out the remediation and demolition of the building, but the quote should come in below $463,100.

The end result will be an empty lot on Dayton Road that the town will try to sell, Steward said. The hope is to turn it into housing – particularly senior housing – or into a mixed-use development composed of housing and low-traffic retail, he said. Neighbors of the property have said they do not want to see another high-traffic retail outlet in the area, as the Crystal Mall, the Waterford Commons and two smaller strip malls already surrounds them.

Steward said the town will use a real estate agent to try to sell the property. The motion to demolish the building passed with just one dissenting vote, made by William Auwood.

“It is a good piece of property," Auwood said. "It was good enough for the kids until we came along with the new ones and it would still be there if the referendum (to build new schools) went the other way.”

The school was used as an elementary school from 1923 to 2008. Town Historian Bob Nye got the property put on Connecticut’s historical register this past summer, and the town – per state mandate – will build a display honoring the school’s past.