Peekskill-Cortlandt Patch Home of the Week: May 4 Edition

Attention all HGTV wannabes!

Your mission: Convert St. Patrick's School in Verplanck into an unbelievable custom dream home. Here's what you get to work with:

• The 3,000 square foot rectory building with 5 bedrooms, 2 baths, kitchen, living room, dining room, heated porch, full basement & laundry..

Over the last few years, the Roman Catholic Church has been forced to close several schools throughout the metropolitan area. Realtor Tom LaPerch is tasked with selling five church-owned properties located from Riverdale in the south to Poughkeepsie up north. But when he rang the bell at St. Pat's rectory, he was in for a big surprise.

The nun who answered the door was his first grade teacher at St. Pat's in Yorktown! You can imagine his pleased astonishment seeing Sister Ann Michael's face after so many years! Sister Ann worked at the school, and will probably (unfortunately) have to find new accommodations when the property sells.

St. Patrick's Parish in Verplanck was founded in 1843. On Nov. 15, 1890 Rev. Patrick Lee purchased buildings on Seventh Street for the purposes of starting a school. At its peak, about 200 scholars attended K-8th grade every year. In the 1980's enrollment dwindled, until the school only provided pre-K service to a handful of local children.

Caretaker Harry Madison has seen it all. His wife was the teacher for the pre-K program. He still maintains the property, and was kind enough to show me around. Both the rectory and the school are old brick buildings with wonderful exteriors and interiors that will need an enormous amount of work. The cinder block and steel gym is in good utilitarian condition. The giant cross and statuary in the photos will be moved to nearby St. Patrick's Cemetery on Broadway.

The building, located at 115 7th Avenue in Verplanck, is being offered as a commercial/ industrial property. This is in keeping with the best professional Real Estate practices, which say that a property should ideally be offered for the “highest and best” use, which would bring the seller the greatest possible return. To me, the highest & best use, and the easiest possible restoration, would be to return the property to use as a school. That being unlikely, I hope that some visionary can see the potential in this property. After all, it's priced at only $500,000.

Mr. LaPerch of Houlihan Lawrence's commercial division looks forward to calls at845.729.4211 or 845.227.440; email TLaPerch@HLcommercialgroup.com.

About the Author

Joel Heumann has been a Realtor for 13 years and is currently an Associate Broker with Crowne Victoria Realty in Yorktown.   If you have any Real Estate related questions, or are interested in buying or selling Real Estate in the area, he can be reached at JHeumann@gmail.com