By ANTHONY aRUSSO
Special to the Standard

EXETER — With Halloween right around the corner, many youths may be heading to the abandoned Ladd School, the site of many curious cases and scary stories throughout the past century, in search of a nighttime scare.

However, the Ladd School, which opened in 1907 and was officially shut down in 1994, will not be abandoned for too much longer. The state has finalized plans to build the Rhode Island Fire Training Academy at the historic Exeter site.

According to Kevin Flynn, the associate director of Statewide Planning, the designs are now complete and the project is up for bid. Flynn believes that if all goes as planned the academy could be open as early as the fall of next year.

“The state does not have [a fire training academy], there are some small ones from town to town but nothing as good as this one,” he said.

Flynn said that this is a necessary project because it is vital for all fire trainees in the state to have access to the best training so that they will be ready for anything.

“The people who dial 9-1-1 will have the best trained personnel available,” Flynn said.

Statewide Planning had looked at several other sites around the state, but they were all rejected for one reason or another. The former Ladd Center is in a good location geographically, according to Flynn, and is large enough to accommodate the facility.

The site is a vast parcel of land that is situated between the Veterans Memorial Cemetery and the Exeter Country Club. A large portion of the land is protected under a conservation easement. There are also 82 acres of open land on the site, and 18 acres that will require demolition and reconstruction.

The Exeter Job Corps Academy and the Phoenix House, a substance abuse treatment center, are both located on the site now.

Flynn said that Statewide Planning has met with Exeter Planning and the Town council numerous times to keep the town updated with the progress of the project and to field any concerns.

One of the largest concerns is that the Ladd School sits on top of a large, clean aquifer that will have to endure the perils of demolition and construction.

“It is an obvious concern that anything we do could harm the aquifer,” Flynn said.  “We have acknowledged the requests of the town in the plan, which is designed to have no impact on the aquifer.

Exeter Town Council President Calvin Ellis agreed that the aquifer is important to preserve and that the state has listened to the town’s concerns. Ellis also said that aside from the aquifer, other problems could include noise and traffic increases for people in the surrounding area.

“In terms of noise mitigation, the trees will provide sound barriers, and most of the noise is contained inside the buildings,” Ellis said.

Ellis does not seem too worried about the negative side of this project.

“Assuming that this doesn’t cause trouble in the neighborhood, than I think that it will be just fine,” he said.
Ellis stressed that the real concern for the town is not any damage that this project may cause, but instead the town being involved in future plans by the state.

“Overriding concern in Exeter is that we be included in the planning process, and we hope future plans come before us and we can see them move forward,” he said. “If other initiatives do surface, Exeter very much wants to be involved from the initial planning.”

The Ladd School opened its doors 98 years ago and was then called The Rhode Island School for the Feeble Minded, a school for the mentally handicapped and challenged. The institution eventually took on the name of its first superintendent, Dr. Joseph Ladd.

Eventually, reports of patient cruelty, neglect and severe overcrowding prompted former Gov. Edward DiPrete to order the school be closed. After the last of the the center’s residents were moved to group homes in the early 1990s, the center was officially closed.