Brown School Request for Expressions of Interest (RFI)

The City of Newburyport is preparing to offer the former Brown School at 40 Milk Street for adaptive reuse. To ensure a successful Request for Proposals (RFP) process, the City is seeking input at this time from both nonprofits and developers for creative proposals to enable the highest and best use(s) of the property. Through this RFI the City is seeking preliminary concepts, and qualifications of development teams, to assess the feasibility of redevelopment scenarios and inform a future RFP.

The purpose of this RFI is to determine the level of interest in purchase and adaptive reuse of the “surplus” portion of Brown School property, and to consider the range of creative options for such adaptive reuse from potential partners, in accordance with the Redevelopment Goals outlined herein.

The City is inviting responses from development teams that can demonstrate their ability to successfully preserve and reuse the former school building for the production of affordable housing. There is also interest in preserving the existing gym/assembly space as a community resource if feasible. However, the extent to which the gym addition (and/or this portion of the property) will be included in any subsequent disposition by the City is unclear at this time. Expressions of Interest submitted in response to this RFI may help to inform such decisions, which are necessary for any final disposition of the “surplus” property.

The City of Newburyport, through its Office of Planning and Development, will accept written Expressions of Interest for the fee interest purchase of surplus property at the former Brown School property located at 40 Milk Street in Newburyport, MA until 10:00 a.m. on Friday, September 8, 2023. The Office will subsequently summarize and publicize each proposal for consideration by the Newburyport City Council, Mayor and general public.