For second time, no bids for Carver Center

Rose Pittman Gibson, right, and Schenectady City Councilwoman Marion Porterfield look over a plaque honoring the memory of Gibson's brother, James Pittman, who was killed in the Vietnam War.

Community members who gathered for a second auction Thursday morning outside the former Carver Community Center in Hamilton Hill again went home disappointed after no qualifying bids of $150,000 or more were made.

But Rose Pittman Gibson, who was among those who wants to see the center go to an organization that will reopen the center, closed since 2013, had something to smile about.

After auctioneers announced the lack of bids, Chapter 7 trustee Gregory Harris allowed her to go into the building and take out a plaque bearing her brother’s name. Her brother, James Pittman, was the first soldier from Schenectady killed in the Vietnam War and the plaque was posted on a wall in the Garden Court, which was dedicated to his memory.

“I’ve been trying to get that plaque for the longest,” Gibson said, holding the plaque’s three metal pieces in her hands. “It doesn’t mean anything to anybody else but our family, so we got it off the wall.”

Gibson and her brother lived on Hamilton Street and grew up going to the community center when it was on Lafayette Street, she said. He was 18 when he died Oct. 15, 1966, in battle; Gibson was 19.

An article from the Oct. 21, 1966 edition of the Schenectady Gazette reported the arrival of Pittman’s body in Schenectady the day before, and referred to Pittman as “Schenectady’s first solider to die in Vietnam.”

“They were doing night reconnaissance and someone stepped on a land mine, and a small piece of shrapnel hit him in the head and killed him instantly,” she said.

Up until a couple years ago, Gibson said, her brother’s name had been left off the Memorial Wall at Veterans Parks, so the plaque at Carver was Pittman’s only local memorial. When Gibson learned that her brother’s name was missing, the family paid to have it added to the wall, she said.

“I just assumed that my brother’s name was on there all these years,” she said.

Gibson has been trying to get the plaque from Carver ever since she learned the center would be closing. At the time, about two years ago, she asked one of the center’s board members for help but that never materialized. When she recently saw the building up for auction, she called the number listed on a sign posted on the building’s entrance, “but nobody answered.” So on Thursday, she asked Harris for assistance and he let her into the building.

“You don’t know what this means to me and my family,” said Gibson, who was joined at the auction by her sister, brother-in-law and 7-year-old granddaughter.

auction postponed

The auction was postponed until 10 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 10, outside the center.

“We’re going to give it another shot,” Harris, the bankruptcy trustee, said. “People keep expressing interest then not showing up.”

Several community members who have been raising money to buy the center and reopen it did show up, but they were unable to meet the minimum bid, which hasn’t gone down since the first auction on Aug. 15.

The group, which began their efforts two days before the first auction, has raised about $20,000.

“We don’t think that $150,000 is a fair asking price,” said Damonni Farley, 34, who grew up going to the center and is leading the effort. “But can we meet it? Yeah. I think we can do anything.”

Farley said a community-owned Carver Center would encourage ownership and pride in the community, “and that’s what we need.”

“Things that happen, the violence in the streets, it’s to people we know,” he said, “it’s to kids we know. So it’s real for us.”

The center at 700 Craig St. shut down suddenly in December 2013 with a significant amount of money owed to vendors and the IRS. The minimum bid included that building, a two-family home at 201 Duane Ave. and parcels of land at 702 Craig St., 605 Craig St. and 215 Duane Ave.

Phil Danahera, a bankruptcy court attorney, said there are liens against the property, and the minimum bid, determined by Judge Robert Littlefield in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, can’t be lowered without the lien creditors’ cooperation.

“If those lien creditors were able to get together and say, ‘We’ll approve a carve out sale where a lesser number is paid into the bankruptcy court to pay creditors,’ then the judge would possibly approve that,” Danahera explained.

Jennica Petrik-Huff, a project manager for the Albany-based nonprofit Community Builders, said the property is worth $15,000, and that’s based on property assessments.

The $150,000 minimum bid? “It’s based on what the creditors are looking for to get back,” she said.

Petrik-Huff said she was at the auction Thursday to listen. Community Builders owns 602 Craig St. across the corner from the former community center, and plans to convert the former Horace Mann Elementary School into 34 affordable housing units for seniors and veterans.

“Our position is that if there is a local community group that wants to purchase the building, we’re not going to bid against them,” she said. “If there is an out-of-stater or an out-of-towner that is going to bid on this building, we’re going to bid to keep it within a local community ownership for community purposes.”

Gibson said she would happily return the plaque memorializing her brother should the center reopen.

“I wish they would open it back up because this is something that the community really needs,” she said.