People want to give back, but you have to give them the opportunity.”

Duncan Ingraham

Mr. Ingraham, we are not going to buy a pig in a poke.”

Charles Levesque, Portsmouth Town Council

PORTSMOUTH — Nearly four years after he was given the green light to come up with a formal plan for the use of the vacant Coggeshall School building, Duncan Ingraham was back before the Town Council Monday with essentially the same pitch he made in 2019.

That proposal is to transform the dilapidated 25,088-square-foot building, at 321 East Main Road, into a “Portsmouth Youth Activity Center” which the local Realtor said would actually serve townspeople of all ages.

Ingraham, 79, argued against demolishing the building to make way for a Little League field (at least one such field is being lost in the north end of town), saying the cost of tearing the former school down would be anywhere from $300,000 to $500,000. He told the council he has commitments from several local contractors to mitigate or remove the building’s asbestos, mold, mildew and to install/update a sprinkler system at an initial cost of $500,000, Ingraham said. 

That means for essentially the same cost as demolishing the old school, which the town previously leased to the Aquidneck Island Christian Academy and Pennfield Schools, the town would once again have a functioning building instead of a vacant lot still waiting for a baseball field to be built on it, he said.

“People want to give back, but you have to give them the opportunity,” Ingraham said.

More details needed

But as they did in September 2019, council members Monday said they still needed more concrete details about Ingraham’s proposal, such as who was committing to complete what work, at what cost, and under what timeframe. That’s why, several council members said, they asked Ingraham to come back with a detailed plan after the 2019 meeting, but he never did. The backup material he submitted to the council for Monday’s meeting was not sufficient, members said.

“Come back with something that’s not a letter. Something that says, ‘This person, this person and this person will be willing to do this type of work,’” said council member Charles Levesque. “Mr. Ingraham, we are not going to buy a pig in a poke.” 

Added Council Vice President Len Katzman, “It’s lovely to have people in the community say ‘I love Portsmouth,’ but if we’re going to sign a contract that places the property into somebody else’s control on the premise that it won’t cost Portsmouth something because volunteers are going to spend their money, we need to know the scope of that.” (The original concept was to lease the building to a third party, the nonprofit Portsmouth Youth Activity Center, spearheaded by Ingraham.

Ingraham, however, said it wouldn’t make sense for him to write up a detailed plan at this point. “If you want something in black and white — ‘This is the plan’ — I’m sorry; I don’t know what the answer to that is, and I don’t know anybody who does if they’re telling the truth,” he said. “I’ll give you a plan (but) it may or may not be the plan we agree to two or three months from now, because it changes.”

Four years older

Tearing it down, he insisted, just doesn’t make sense. Meanwhile, the building sits — four years older and not secured from trespassers, he added.

“You’ve got different people who are willing to serve,” he said. “There are a lot of people in town who really want to give back and are interested in academics, leadership issues, and sports. That was my pitch four years ago, and what has been done? Whoever is in charge of that building, if he was in the property management business he’d be fired.”

One of Ingraham’s ideas is putting an exercise center in one of the former classrooms — not just for young athletes but for senior citizens as well. “I went through the senior center and there is basically no physical activity in that building. This facility, I will guarantee you, will have physically activity for children and adults,” he said.

Their center could also be used for academic enrichment such as tutoring, plus drama, dance and more, he said. The building has room for a pitching machine and batting cage, which could also be used for hockey, available year round, Ingraham said.

Council President Kevin Aguiar said if the town did decide to turn the building into a community center, it would still have to play by municipal bidding rules — a point rejected by Ingraham, who said the conventional requirements can be relaxed if volunteers are involved in a building project.

Council member Keith Hamilton said while it’s great that volunteers want to give back to the town, he was concerned about their actual commitment. “My fear is when the rubber hits the road, they go, ‘Oh my God this is a lot of work,’ and they disappear. The same thing happened at the Brown House (at Glen Farm). We had a great volunteer organization that was going to rebuild it, and it never happened. We got stuck with it, and then we had to finish it.”

Mr. Hamilton made a motion to forward Ingraham’s idea to the town’s Parks & Recreation Committee for further study. Ingraham can make his pitch to the committee, which will then come back to the council with a recommendation at a later date.

Mr. Ingraham said he’d be happy to reach out to the recreation committee.

Future meetings

The council will next meet at 7 p.m. on the following dates: Monday, Sept. 11; Monday, Sept. 25; Tuesday, Oct. 10; and Saturday, Oct. 14, on Prudence Island (time to be determined).