LETTERS: Should Tarbell Schools Partners Eat Thousands in Architect's Fees?
Dear Editor,
In your recent article (see the April 24, 2014 issue) on the Tarbell School situation, you refer to Robin Kane as the primary person involved in the current Purchase and Sale agreement outstanding on Tarbell.
My understanding, based on various sources of information, is that the proposal to purchase Tarbell School came from a partnership put together to support Robin Kane's Country Kids Daycare Center in its move to Tarbell School. Apparently, Robin Kane is the junior partner. The intention was to renovate Tarbell to the (exceedingly high) building code standards for a school or daycare center, with Country Kids being the primary tenant in the building.
Unfortunately, Robin's lease with RiverCourt, Residences where Country Kids was then located, expired. RiverCourt wanted to use the space for expansion, so they said that Robin could stay on as a tenant-at-will with a 50 percent rent increase. Robin couldn't afford to stay at RiverCourt, Tarbell was a year away from being ready to move Country Kids into, and if she shut down a daycare center with 70 children and more than 20 staff members for a year, it would be very difficult to start up again. Fortunately, with the help of Selectmen, she was able to find new quarters in the former Anytime Fitness building at Mill Run Plaza.
By this time, the senior partners had spent some serious money in architectural and engineering studies for the renovation of Tarbell. It should be mentioned, that while the building code requirements made the project expensive by most people's standards - fire sprinkler system, etc. - the partners were prepared to invest more than $750K in the project. To put this into perspective, we are told that Gregg Yanchenko expects to invest $1.7 million to renovate the Prescott School. The reason for Tarbell's current state of limbo has nothing to do with the cost of the planned renovations and everything to do with RiverCourt's actions, since finding another tenant like Country Kids is extremely unlikely.
The present situation, as I understand it, is that Robin Kane no longer has any interest in Tarbell, but her senior partners would like to recoup their architectural fee investment, by completing the purchase of Tarbell from the town and then selling it to some other party - "flipping" it, in the term that Selectman Peter Cunningham used.
And while it may be the Selectmen's legal option to rescind the P&S agreement, to suggest, as one of the Selectmen did, that the partners might "amicably" agree to this is akin to the tasteless and insulting "advice" to relax and enjoy being assaulted. More to the point would be to hope that the partners would be willing to eat many thousands of dollars of architect's fees without resorting to suing the town for breach of contract. Or perhaps the town could purchase the architectural studies from the partners at cost.
Sincerely yours,
Brooks Lyman
Townsend Road
