The Providence Journal / Steve Szydlowski

Residents of an East Greenwich condominium complex are objecting to plans by New England Institute of Technology to build a sprawling new campus that would surround their homes along the town’s northern border.

The Warwick-based technical school’s intentions came to light last summer as it began negotiating with some landowners near the intersection of Division Road and South County Trail.

Those negotiations began, school officials said, as they considered buying a never-occupied office building near the intersection. The school, so far, has yet to buy the building once intended to house the headquarters of the former Brooks-Eckerd drugstore chain. But the college, known as New England Tech, has amassed 150 adjacent acres in East Greenwich that include a nine-hole golf course and most of the Rocky Hill Fairgrounds.

The school also recently reached an agreement to buy an additional 50 acres that were formerly intended to be the site of a 400-plus-unit housing development, Wellington Woods, said East Greenwich Town Manager William Sequino Jr. The sale of the Wellington Woods property is expected to close later this month, he said.

The combined 200 acres, southwest of the intersection of Division Road and South County Trail, would allow New England Tech to move from its crowded Warwick buildings to a campus setting that would include dormitories, ball fields and more.

The acreage surrounds the 16-unit Taylor Pointe condominium complex, whose narrow property jabs southward into the New England Tech property, nearly cleaving it in two.

Taylor Pointe residents are upset about the prospects of being overwhelmed by the commotion of a college campus and, so far, have rejected the notion of selling an easement across their property to the school.

“We are not going to sit back and be surrounded by a full-blown college campus,” said Jack Cacchiotti, a Taylor Pointe resident.

School officials have met with Taylor Pointe residents to discuss the campus proposal and the possibility of creating the easement, condo owners and a school official confirmed.

New England Tech has not offered to buy Taylor Pointe outright from the owners of its 16 units, said Philip Parsons, the college’s vice president and general counsel.

The easement isn’t necessary for access to the westernmost parcel it has acquired, Parsons said, where the East Greenwich Golf & Country Club is located.

“It’s just a way to access that third parcel without going out on the road,” he explained. The campus would be built in three phases, with work on the golf course parcel to come last as the school builds athletic fields there, Parsons said. The design includes landscaping buffers around Taylor Pointe.

“That was all to alleviate their concerns,” Parsons said.

But buffer zones don’t seem to be enough to placate Taylor Pointe’s inhabitants.

“I don’t want a college in my backyard,” said Michael Palmaccio, another resident. “We’re hoping to stop it.”

The men said they bought their condos when the project first opened four years ago because the lightly developed area is quiet. A college campus would obliterate that sense of solitude, they said.

They didn’t object to other plans for the acreage, in which developers sought to build other condos or office buildings, the two men said. Those plans didn’t come with the prospect of hundreds of young adults living in dormitories next door.

Unlike a technical school, the two residents said, those proposals fit the town’s Comprehensive Plan and would generate tax revenue for the town.

“I can’t understand the benefit of having them there,” Palmaccio said.

In Warwick, New England Tech pays $166,000 in property taxes on land that it does not use for educational purposes, including a commercial building it leases out and some vacant lots, according to a city tax official and confirmed by Parsons.

Town residents can get a better idea of how the school intends to lay out the campus — where most of its 3,000 students would attend classes and some would live — during a town Planning Board meeting at 7 p.m. Feb. 6.

The campus, being crafted by Sasaki Associates Inc., a Boston architectural firm, does not include the institute’s automotive center, which is expected to remain at its current location, just off Route 95 in Warwick.

In addition to the three properties it has acquired, New England Tech also had been negotiating to buy the former Brooks-Eckerd headquarters, which is off Division Road and has been vacant since the drugstore chain’s sale last year to Rite Aid Corp.

The company last year rejected the college’s purchase offer as “too low,” said Sequino and “the Rite Aid building as of right now is not part of this mix.”

Rite Aid spokeswoman Ashley Flowers said last week, “We’re going through negotiations with multiple parties,” and declined to elaborate.

Unclear is whether the school has sought to purchase a single-family house along Division Road adjacent to Taylor Pointe.

The 150 acres purchased from three separate owners during the last two months has a total assessed value of more than $12 million, according to the East Greenwich tax assessor. That includes the nine-hole East Greenwich Golf & Country Club with an assessed value of $1.89 million. The total price paid for the property was not immediately available.

Real-estate records reported in The Providence Journal, however, show that New England Technical Institute purchased property on Nov. 20 from James and Paula Malm for $15 million. James Malm, a developer, had previously envisioned building condominiums, affordable apartments for the elderly, restaurants, offices and a hotel in five buildings on the fairgrounds property.

pgrimald@projo.com