In the end, even the $1 a year Warwick was asking the Artists’ Exchange to pay to lease the former Christopher Rhodes School in the Norwood section proved to be too costly.

Now, the city will re-advertise requests for proposals for the 43,000-square-foot school, which closed in 2008. The 10-acre school property backs up to Aldrich Junior High School. It’s not what former Ward 2 Councilman and City Council President Bruce Place had hoped for.

Place headed the Rhodes Reuse Committee named by Mayor Scott Avedisian, and he was excited with the prospect that Artists’ Exchange, based on Rolfe Street in Cranston, would relocate to Warwick. Rhodes would have given the Exchange more than four times the space and provided the organization the ability to offer artists individual studio spaces and classrooms.

As part of the agreement, Warwick residents were to have received free Exchange membership and reduced program fees. The Exchange was also looking to bring some of its programs into Warwick schools at no cost.

“The lawyers got to it,” Place said of the agreement, which eventually came apart over the cost of maintaining and running the building. In exchange for using the building virtually for free, the Exchange would have been required to pay for upkeep of the building and property.

Ward 4 Councilman Joseph Solomon raised the issue of whether the Exchange could afford those costs when the lease came before the City Council last October. Solomon questioned whether the organization could afford the utility bills, let alone the maintenance, on a school built in 1952.

The Exchange comes under the direction of Gateways to Change, a non-profit organization. When the council learned Artists’ Exchange is operating with a $7 million budget and is paying monthly rent of $6,500 that would be close to the projected cost of operating from Rhodes, it seemed like everything would work out.

Not so.

According to Warwick Principal Planner Richard Crenca, the Exchange’s architects and engineers looked at the building, determining that building code improvements, removal of asbestos tiling, roof repairs plus amenities the Exchange planned to have, such as central air conditioning, would cost $5 million.

“It wasn’t as easy [as] to go in with a gallon of paint and a broom,” Crenca said.

Even at $5 million, Crenca thought the project could be doable, as the Exchange was looking for a 30-year lease and improvements could have been amortized over that period.

The vacant school has been a nemesis for Place.

Soon after it closed, it was rented to the Rhode Island School for the Deaf as a transitional facility while the school waited for completion of its buildings in Providence. Once the School for the Deaf moved out, the building became a target of break-ins and vandals. The city installed alarms, and police and fire calls were commonplace. Warwick Police use the building for some training exercises.

The city advertised the property with hopes of finding a developer that would convert the school into housing with an emphasis on the elderly, perhaps even an assisted living facility. There was no interest from developers.

“What we didn’t want was to have the school knocked down and for somebody to build houses in there,” Place said.

For a while, with a school study committee recommending the consolidation of Gorton and Aldrich Junior High Schools at Vets High, it looked like the Rhodes property might become an element to a larger project. With Rhodes backing up to Aldrich, the combined school properties represent about 20 acres.

The School Committee, however, didn’t act on the consolation plan, and when, in another round of bidding, the Exchange offered the only proposal, Place and his committee recommended it to the council.

Place said he would consider heading up the study group again, but that’s up to the mayor to decide.

Meanwhile, the school continues to be a source of complaints over break-ins and vandals. Place is downcast.

“So for a buck a year, they couldn’t afford it,” he said.

Elaine McKenna-Yeaw, co-founder and director of the Artists’ Exchange, could not be reached for comment.