State hands Greenwich Village building over to the city

The keys to a Greenwich Village building that formerly housed a state agency are now in the hands of the city, which plans to build a new middle school on the site.

The School Construction Authority reportedly obtained control of the building at 75 Morton Street earlier this week and will construct an 800-seat facility.

Although the city dished out $40 million last year for the 177,000-square-foot property, the state-run Office for People with Developmental Disabilities couldn’t move out until repairs were made to its Hurricane Sandy-ravaged Lower Manhattan digs, DNAinfo reported.

“Oftentimes in politics you spend a lot of time keeping things from getting worse, so it’s nice to be working on something that’s really an improvement,” Matt Borden, chief of staff for Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, said to DNAinfo. The school is slated for completion in 2017. [DNAinfo] — Angela Hunt