The Newport City Council held a special meeting on July 30, 2025, at 5:30 PM local time (noted as 10:30 UTC in instructions) to address a time-sensitive agenda item: waiving the city's right of first refusal to allow the transfer of the Gallagher Wing property at the Florence Gray Center to the Newport Housing Authority. The action is tied to renovations funded through the Pandemic Recovery Office CPF-CLC (Community Learning Center) project.
Bring the special meeting to order. Uh Madam Clerk, will you do the roll call, please? David Carlin. Lynn Underwood Segley. Here. Charlie Holder. Here. Sai Cam Savorvon. Here. J. Marie Napolitano. Alan Pinnock. Here. Stephanie Smythe. Here. There is a quorum present, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Action item 6469. The city supports transfer of the Gallagher Wing property at the Florence Gray Center to the Newport Housing Authority by waiving the first of right refusal when offered the property by the state of Rhode Island per RIGL 35-7-5. I move approval. Second. All right. So we're bringing this up to a special meeting because this is a time-sensitive issue. And uh, you know, any days we spend not acting on this is one day less that we have uh an opportunity to jump on this. So is there anyone from the administration that wanted to discuss this subject or are we all set to vote? Uh unless there are questions, we are we are all set. We believe that they do it. Council action form speaks for itself. All right, anybody on the council have any questions? Oh, I thought so. I was going to sorry. Um so this is to sell the Gallier wing back to the Newport Housing, yeah. Back to the Newport Housing Authority. Correct. Um, do we have any idea of what they're going to do with it once they get it? Is it going to go into the hands of the Boys and Girls Club or become part of the CLC? Do you know? The I don't know specifically that wing. I know Newport Housing Authority gains ownership, which then allows them as part of the oversight of the entire project for all of the Florence Gray Center uh capital uh projects uh fund issued money to to conduct renovations to. Uh I don't know specifically which agency uh would take over which spaces. I'm not sure they know yet either. Okay. Mr. Chair, can we hear from yeah, please come up? How are you doing? Many Ferrero, KCM group from the ORS representative for the project, uh CLC project. So to answer your question, uh the Gallagher Wayne portion of the building will be incorporated into the CLC project. Um it'll be a mix of uh tenants or organizations that will occupy that space then it'd be pretty much all of that will occupy that space, but yeah, it it is a uh critical component to the the CLC project. Yeah, I agree.