Catholic girls' school finally finds home in Medfield

A Catholic girls' school that has never had a permanent home has finally found one, buying a 13-acre campus in Medfield that once served as a lab complex for a healthcare company.

The Montrose School will be moving from Natick to the site that formerly hosted research and development labs for the Bayer HealthCare Diagnostics Division. School officials say they need the room.

''The school has flourished, thanks to the commitment and dedication of families and educators who believe in its mission," said Karen Bohlin, who heads the school. ''This gives us the freedom to grow."

A committee spent five years searching for a campus. The school had previously made serious but unsuccessful attempts to buy land at Weston Nurseries in Hopkinton and the former St. Stephen's Priory in Dover.

Before renting in Natick, the 25-year-old school had also rented in Westwood and Brookline.

The $7.4 million sale became official on Feb. 2. Bohlin said parents and alumnae contributed most of the money.

The school, which is independent of the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, relies on tuition and donations for its programs and facilities.

Teachers and staff recently toured the cavernous buildings at the Medfield site, dreaming of the possibilities.

The school, which now must lease playing fields and drive its varsity basketball team to play home games in Newton, will eventually have a campus including fields and classroom buildings, said Bohlin.

''The Straw Hat Building alone is 60 percent more space than we currently have," Bohlin said of the 77,000-square-foot main building, which occupies one corner of the property.

Other buildings, used by Bayer to research and develop blood gas testing equipment, add another 138,000 square feet.

Medfield officials had hoped a business would take the space to help lift some of the property tax burden from residents.

They were resigned to the arrival of the school, even though it won't pay taxes. They said they felt it would have less of an adverse impact than another option, new homes, which could use more town services.

''The owner of the property said that, because of the current market conditions that include a lot of vacant office space in the area, it would be difficult to get another tenant in there for industrial or commercial use," said Medfield Town Administrator Michael Sullivan. ''He encouraged us to rezone it for high-end condominiums, but what good would that do us?"

Once a bustling operation that loosed 600 employees on downtown Medfield each day at noon, the Bayer labs had been scaled back over several years before the company pulled out last fall.

According to Sullivan, Medfield has lost four of its five largest employers in the past few years, including Bayer, a catalog sales company, and the former state mental hospital.

Montrose doesn't plan to move in until September 2006, but by then, school officials say, a chapel will occupy a portion of the main building and a 400-space parking lot in the center of the property will have been replaced with a playing field.

Some of the industrial buildings will likely be demolished to make way for a gym and perhaps an auditorium over time.

Because the school draws students from as far away as Quincy and Braintree, the Medfield location is just right, Bohlin said.

The school now has fewer than 150 students, but that may double over the next few years, to almost 300 girls in grades 6 through 12.

During the tour of the Straw Hat Building, named for the site's even earlier incarnation as a mill for making straw hats, the dozen faculty and staff tagging behind Bohlin peered into labs left by the building's former tenant.

''This is wonderful, a treat," said Michelle Berti, a member of the Montrose art department, as she eyed the high ceilings and big windows of ''the tower," a bright but unfinished third-floor space that is earmarked for art classes.

The school's effect on the town remains to be seen.

At Lord's Department Store on Route 109, one of the town's landmarks, proprietor Bill Kelly said he doesn't know much about the school but is ready to meet the students' needs.

''We will definitely key our departments around the kids, depending on what they want," Kelly said. ''We will flow with the trend they bring into town. Whether it's five or 500 people that come to town, it's got to help business."

Al Larkin, owner of Dylan's coffee shop, wondered whether the school's patronage of local businesses would make up for the property taxes the town will miss, but said he's glad the buildings won't sit empty. ''We're optimistic," he said. ''You've got to be."

Next door, at Bella Wishes boutique, owner Lauren Santucci is perhaps uniquely poised for the crush of new customers the school could bring. After all, teenage girls who are required to wear plaid uniform skirts during school hours seem likely to be drawn to the designer jeans the store stocks.

''It's going to be great for my store," Santucci said. ''I'd love to help them with a different look."

Alison O'Leary Murray may be reached at amurray@globe.com.