Plans to sell two historic University-owned houses on Angell Street are "up in the air" following the Corporation's decision in February to scrap plans for a giant brain sciences building, said Mike McCormick, assistant vice president of planning, design and construction.
The final word on the sale is pending the outcome of an internal investigation into the possibility of accommodating the need for a new brain sciences facility elsewhere on campus, McCormick said. Those findings will be presented to the Corporation at its next meeting in May, when a more definite decision will be made, he said.
Plans to sell the houses - at 127 and 129 Angell St. - are "essentially on hold until we finish" the investigation process, McCormick said.
"No decisions have been made yet," he said. "It could be many years" before the University is ready to move the houses, he added.
The Angell Street properties currently occupy the location previously chosen for a proposed "Mind Brain Behavior" building. The University hoped to preserve the houses, rather than knocking them down, by selling them to owners who were willing to move them elsewhere on the East Side. In order to attract buyers, the houses themselves were put on the market for $10 apiece, and Brown promised up to $1 million to defray moving costs.
Ninety parties expressed interest in buying one of the houses, McCormick said, of whom nine submitted serious proposals. Brown worked with the city and the Providence Preservation Society to cull two specific proposals from the nine, he said.
If it proves feasible to house the brain science programs elsewhere, the University may keep the houses and rent them as student housing, McCormick said.
There is no plan to use the two buildings to house academic departments or offices, he said, because building codes are much stricter for offices than for residences and the buildings would require extensive and expensive renovations to bring them up to code.
Brown has notified the two prospective buyers that a decision has been delayed until May, McCormick said, and the parties were understanding.
"Everybody understands, given the economy, it's much harder to move forward," he said.
The University realizes that if the delay is too long, it will lose its current buyers and will have to begin the process again, McCormick said, but the University's long-term plans still involve moving the houses at some point.
Relocating the Urban Environmental Lab - another historic building on Angell Street that was granted a temporary reprieve by the Corporation's decision - is also still a possibility, he said.
The University would eventually like to put a large new building in the place of the two houses and the UEL, he said, and to relocate the historic houses to the perimeter of College Hill.
"We're not moving the houses this summer, but everything else is still very much up in the air," McCormick said.
