Town Council Work Session
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What is the Paxton Trust’s plan for revitalizing the Paxton campus?
Tonight's town council work session of October 27th, 2025. Everyone is present with the exception of council member Nacy. Our first, we have a presentation tonight, a 10 minute presentation from the Paxton Trust.
Thank you, Madam Mayor and council members. I recognize that you have a very busy agenda tonight and I will try and stay well inside the 10 minutes you've allotted.
Yes, you will.
I'm sure someone's going to enforce that. We are here today to bring you up to speed on where we are on all of the changes that have occurred over the last couple of months at the Paxton campus, and more importantly, share with you at least the beginnings of our efforts to reconstitute that facility. Let me move to a slide here. Our immediate goals are, of course, to maximize the usage of the current campus infrastructure. And that infrastructure, for those that aren't really familiar with it, There's nine buildings, some new, well, not that new, some that were built in the late 1900s, and some very old, including the Carlheim Mansion. And they are all together about 45,000 square feet. And if it's any help to sort of picturing what 45,000 square feet is, Market Station in its entirety is about 50,000 square feet.
So those nine buildings offer a lot of opportunities. Anybody that owns that many square feet and is in the rental business knows that it can be a challenge to get your tenants balanced and maximize the way the premises are used. We are looking very carefully at our fiduciary obligation to maximally serve children in need. in the space that we have, and to the extent it's allowed under the special exception. And that special exception permits up to 75 regular school children, I think is the way that, or regular students, I think is the way language of the ordinance reads, and up to 140 daycare students. There have been woefully less daycare students on that campus in recent years. And it's interesting.
It used to be exclusively daycare. My daughter in the early 90s was daycared there in one of the cottages. I have many memories of driving her to and picking her up. And then lastly, we want to put together a combination of tenants on the premises that the sum of the programs, the whole is greater than the sum of the programs, which we think there's a lot of opportunities in the daycare world preschool programs like Head Start and Pre-Head Start and other early intervention programs. And I think, Madam Mayor, you'd be one of the first people to agree with me that there's no such thing as too early intervention. Most folks that we talk to believe that when those needs of youngsters are identified, the sooner you get to addressing them, the better it is.
So those are our obligations, and they're fiduciary obligations for the trustees. And I should say, I have all three trustees here, Mindy Hartman sitting on the far to your left, and Paige Uthema in the middle, and Mary Lou Liepheimer. to the right. As I think you may know, the trustees are appointed for life by an advisory board at the church, at St. James Episcopal Church, and the advisory board is appointed for life by the trustees. Let me move on. Here's the layout of the buildings on the campus, In some ways, the number of buildings and the size of the buildings and the way they're constructed is very helpful. In other ways, not so much. And the not so much is more in the interest of the Board of Architectural Review.
The brick cottages are about as different and as not cohesive design from the mansion as you could possibly make. But they are exceedingly practical. These buildings were built for the purpose of having daycare students in them, so they all have wheelchair access, handicapped access, bathrooms, his and hers, washer and dryer, kitchens and kitchenettes in them, a fire door on every wall, every outside wall, so both ends and both sides allow for fire exit, making them very safe. And from a size standpoint, there are about, I think three of them are 3,200 square feet, and this one of them is a little bit smaller. But were you to construct them today, pick your price of construction, $300 to $400 a foot, you're looking at over a million dollars each for those buildings.
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Agenda
3 itemsSpeakers
5 identified
Kelly Burk 9 min
Zach Cummings 7 min
Neil Steinberg 5 min
Todd Cimino-Johnson 4 min
Patrick Wilt 2 min
Officials recognised by voice; public commenters shown as “Speaker N” unless they state their name.