NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The City Council will be asked Tuesday to authorize the sale of Sullivan School to Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art Foundation for $50,000. 

 

The nonprofit plans to turn the long vacant school into affordable artists' housing and use classrooms on the lower level for music education in the summer. The proposal will create short-term rental spaces and condominiums catering to artists, designers and production personnel along with single-family modular housing on the 12-acre property.  

 

"Through a carefully planned redevelopment process, we aim to create a multi-use space that serves the needs of residents, uplifts the neighborhood, and upholds the property as a beneficial community asset," according to the foundation's proposal, along with the wooded parcel. "Our vision will reimagine this landscape as a community amenity, extending existing pathways and responding to Kemp Park to create an activated and accessible neighborhood green space." 

 

Mayor Jennifer Macksey is asking the council to OK the plans on Tuesday to allow the foundation's 120-due diligence to begin immediately. 

 

Michael Murphy Studio and Creative Development Partners are listed as the designers and developers of the $15 million project. 

 

Sullivan School, built as East School in 1965, has been closed since Colegrove Park Elementary School opened in 2016. The property — valued at $2.6 million in 2024 — has been put out to bid several times in the last decade and twice the City Council has rejected proposals for reuse. 

 

In 2020, the newly formed Berkshire Advanced Manufacturing Training and Education Center had offered a $1 and the promise to invest $14 million into the deteriorating building to turn it into a workforce training center and entrepreneurship hub. 

 

 A year later, the City Council unanimously rejected a proposal to turn the 51,000 square-foot school into a mixed housing development of up to 75 units after objections by neighbors.

 

 Real estate developer and artist Eric Rudd had proffered a plan to turn the school into artist housing back in 2020 but that proposal had not been brought forward. Clarksburg School had looked at Sullivan for temporary accommodations but that fell through when the town voted down a school project.

 

The four-level building has suffered numerous acts of vandalism including fires over the years along with deterioration from age and weather. The school is still full of furniture, books, materials and scattered trash and broken windows are covered with plywood.