Former Greene Township school building being torn down
A former school building and municipal building in Greene Township will be torn down next month.
Equipment to be used in the demolition is already parked outside the building, which dates back to the 1930s.
Township officials said the teardown for the building has been years in the making, driven by deteriorating conditions.
The township had been trying to get the building torn down for the past decade, said Supervisor Kenneth Kiger.
The K2 Engineering firm had condemned the building, said township Secretary Judith Hamlin. The firm had said the degree of repairs required would be infeasible, putting the price tag at $400,000, Hamlin said.
“It’s a neat old building, and that’s been nice, but where do you get the money to fund that, especially when you have engineers saying it’s not worth it?” she said. “People keep thinking, ‘I could fix it up for this,’ or ‘We could do that,’ but it just doesn’t work that way with a government building.”
Numerous problems had been identified, Hamlin said, including mold, asbestos and routine flooding of the basement. The township offices were formerly located in the building. Every time it rained, Hamlin recalled, she had to wade through water to climb a wooden staircase to get to the bathroom.
“I was sitting down there in black mold for years,” she said. “We had snakes, and we had giant tarantulas. Those were really fun.”
The teardown had attracted opposition from residents who objected to seeing a historic building taken away when the possibility remained to save it.
Faye Morris VanDevender was part of a citizens’ group that spent more than a year trying to halt the move to raze the building. She said the damage from the building was fixable, and had occurred from neglect, such as letting the rain gutters on the roof fill with leaves. In response to officials’ concerns about the electric bill, residents had offered to help with repairs to windows and other items.
“They took our one and only public building that our taxes pay for, and now (township officials) have their trailer, and they refuse to allow citizens to have meetings, birthday parties, anything for kids,” VanDevender said, referring to a new modular building that now houses the township’s offices. “Nothing, nothing.”
People interviewed Tuesday were unsure when the school ceased operations, but said it had been several decades. In addition to housing the township’s offices, local groups had used the upper floors of the building for meeting space.
The modular building was funded through a mix of Local Share Account, American Rescue Plan Act and Impact Fee funds, Hamlin said in an interview at the facility’s groundbreaking last year.
No taxpayer funds were being used for the teardown of the new building, either, township officials said. The $22,000 cost was being covered by three private donations, including one person who gave $10,000.
Hamlin said the township was looking at using the school site to build a pavilion where people could hold meetings.
VanDevender had heard about the pavilion, but said it would be too impractical for gatherings in winter months.
She’d heard from a neighbor several days ago that the machinery was down at the school site.
“I spent so much time researching and trying to fight this, sending emails out to people in the township, that I just didn’t go and look at it,” she said.
Plans call for the pavilion to have a full kitchen, restroom and concession stands. The area would also have a playground, landscaping and new fencing.
“We have two grants out there now, (we’re) waiting to hear, and if we don’t get it, we’ll apply for some more,” Hamlin said.