The Aurora City Council is set to vote Tuesday on an agreement that would result in East Aurora schools opening an administration center on the old Copley Hospital campus.
The center could be ready in the former nursing school building at Lincoln Avenue and Seminary Street, on the near East Side, by July 2020.
The proposed agreement between the city and East Aurora School District 131 would have the city paying for about $1.5 million of an overall project of more than $10 million. East Aurora would spend about $9 million.
Aldermen agreed to put the agreement up for a vote on the consent agenda at the Tuesday regular City Council meeting.
The old Copley Hospital is currently being cleaned up by Fox Valley Developers LLC, with future plans to redevelop the buildings into a mixture of medical and residential uses.
Mike Poulakidis, a member of the Fox Valley Developers team, said recently that adding the East Aurora School District administration building into the campus plans “really will help define the property.” At the same time, because it takes up only about 12 percent of the square footage on the campus, it does not affect any revenue the group will receive from historic tax credits.
“For us it’s important because it doesn’t affect our eligibility whatsoever,” Poulakidis said.
According to the agreement, the city would contribute about $1 million in in-kind work on the project, and another $500,000 in cash to the school district. The agreement currently says the city would pay the money to the district at a rate of $25,000 a year.
The in-kind work would be the city vacating a section of Seminary Street from Lincoln Avenue east to an alley on the east side of Bardwell Elementary School, which currently sits across from the old Copley property.
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The city would also relocate the utilities currently under that section of the street and make it a greenway between the administration building and Bardwell.
The developers are using a lot of historic tax credits for the old Copley property, which has buildings dating as far back as the 1880s, and also structures from the 1930s and 1940s, the 1970s and 1980s. It's because of those credits that the project has to be structured in a way that East Aurora does not take ownership of the new administration building right away.
But the intention is for the school district to eventually own its new administration center, as well as the greenway between it and Bardwell School.
In addition to getting a new administration building, East Aurora officials also will have access to a meeting room that could house teacher seminars and other such activities. The district has nothing like that right now.
It also adds green space next to Bardwell School where there currently is none. And the students would be able to use a small park on the other side of the campus, along Weston Street, that is being developed by the Fox Valley Park District.
The entire campus will add green area that does not exist in that older part of Aurora.
“It’s a beautiful school,” said Ald. William Donnell, 4th Ward. “But they are short on open space. This will provide a little. In general, it’s a great improvement to the school.”