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Athens City School Board rejects the city’s proposal to buy a portion of the old West Elementary site for affordable housing
By: David Forster
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(Edit0r’s note: This story was updated to make clear the Athens school district spent $900,000 to demolish West Elementary School, not to demolish the school and convert the site into a practice field for middle school sports teams.)
ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — The Athens City School Board has rejected an offer by the city to purchase land in the west side neighborhood to build affordable housing.
The homes would be sold at a subsidized discount to lower-income residents using a $2 million grant the city recently received from the state.
Mayor Steve Patterson and Service-Safety Director Andy Stone made their pitch to the Athens City School Board at its meeting Thursday night.
The reception was lukewarm.
Superintendent Tom Gibbs reminded the board the district spent $900,000 to demolish West Elementary last year.
“Just to put that into perspective,” he said.
Board members expressed concern that selling off a portion of the property for housing development might devalue the rest of it should the district want to sell the remaining portion down the road.
Another concern was that the district someday might want to use the property for some other purpose and would not only have less of it but the housing might interfere with whatever it wanted to do. The flat portion of the property is now being used as a practice field for middle school sports teams.
“Right now we don’t have a permanent use for that site or a need but we may need to sell the property as a whole in the future,” said board member Dave Hayden.
There was discussion about whether the district and the city could do some kind of land swap. The idea was that in exchange for the property the district would in return get some city-owned space within walking distance of the middle school for teams to use for practice.
Patterson said he was open to exploring something like this.
The board went into executive session to discuss the city’s $50,000 offer and afterward voted unanimously to reject it.
This seems to leave open the possibility for some other kind of offer. But Patterson said Friday the city will now focus on two other locations it identified as options for the housing.
The West Elementary property was the city’s first choice, Patterson told the board, because the development costs will be higher with these other locations, which will reduce the amount of grant funds left over to subsidize the purchase discounts.
One of the locations is on Grosvenor Street. The city owns a lot there and would have to purchase the privately owned lots on each side to build the homes. The other location is on Hudson Avenue, where the city already owns a large enough parcel for the project.
The city is hoping to line up a developer and begin construction on the homes by next summer.