The Town of Sweden has entered a contract to sell 133 State Street to a local dentist. The contract includes the Village of Brockport as the owner of a small portion of the parking lot at the east end of the canal-side facility.
The former senior center has been leased to Lifetime Assistance since 2015 for use as an office building, day habilitation center, and county nutrition program site. Lifetime Assistance had already been operating the county’s nutrition program at the center since 2009 and had leased one room for use by an adult day habilitation program since 2011.
In 2019, the Town of Sweden listed the building for sale with Lifetime Assistance retaining the option to meet any offer received by the Town. After the initial throes of the pandemic, the building was shown many times to potential buyers wishing to convert it to student housing, senior housing, restaurant/banquet facilities, winery/tasting room, etc. None of those proposals came to fruition.
In anticipation of the current offer from the dental practice, the Town gave Lifetime Assistance a notice of termination of lease and immediately began working with Lifetime and Monroe County’s Office of the Aging to move the senior nutrition program to the Sweden/Clarkson Community Center at 4927 Lake Road. Senior recreation programming had already moved to the Community Center in 2015 and it is seen as a natural transition to bring the lunch program to where the majority of seniors participate in a full slate of education, recreational, and social activities.
The Town, County and Lifetime are planning for a mid-May opening of the lunch program at the Community Center. Seniors who use the bus for transportation to the 133 State Street site will still be able to use it for the new location. All other details of the lunch program remain the same: days of the week, times of day, suggested donation, and menu.
While the Town has entered the sales contract, there is still work for the Town and the Village of Brockport to do before the two properties actually transfer ownership. The main property itself has long been zoned residential even though the use of it (dating back to 1980 when the Town first built the original senior center) has been non-residential in nature. When the two municipalities entered into an agreement in August 2019 to sell the properties jointly, there was a tacit understanding that the properties would have to be rezoned; the likelihood of a purchase being made for use as a single family home was very unlikely.
The Town has begun work on an Incentive Zoning application that will be a joint application to the Village Board. The Village’s Incentive Zoning Code requires applicants to provide an amenity or amenities. In this case, not only will the Village receive 3% of the net proceeds of the sale of the properties; the properties will be returned to the tax rolls after more than 44 years. That is a benefit to taxpayers of both municipalities.
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