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Friday, December 12, 2008
By MICKEY POWELL - Bulletin Staff Writer
People aiming to find a beneficial use for the closed Ridgeway Elementary School received advice Thursday night from someone who successfully led efforts to transform another school building.
Mary Jordan, who led efforts to convert the former Spencer-Penn School in western Henry County into a community center, spoke to about 50 people who attended a community meeting at First Baptist Church of Ridgeway.
Spencer-Penn Centre now is “the model for how a school can be recycled ... to benefit a community,” said Henry County Administrator Benny Summerlin.
The community group plans to meet again in January to discuss potential new uses for Ridgeway Elementary and try to agree upon one to pursue.
A lot of volunteer labor will be needed, Jordan told the group.
The Spencer-Penn School Preservation Organization used “every bit of free labor” it could get to help renovate the school, she said, from volunteers to people needing to do community service as part of criminal sentences.
Don’t worry about finding enough volunteers, she added.
“If a project is meant to be,” Jordan said, “a lot of things will fall into place” naturally and volunteers will come forth when they are needed.
Jordan said money also will be necessary to get the project going and keep it going. She recalled that the Spencer-Penn organization borrowed $20,000. But it also received grants, and it rents part of its facility to a dance studio.
That is “rent every month that pays the light bill,” she emphasized.
Ridgeway resident Sam Brown, who is leading the effort to reuse Ridgeway Elementary, said he is not thinking much about money right now. Instead, he is focused on getting a consensus on how to reuse the former school.
The Ridgeway Town Council wants the building to “become something the town can be proud of” and not fall into dilapidation, Mayor Ed Page said.
Possible uses mentioned by Brown include a town hall and/or place where young people can go to socialize after school.
But whatever use eventually is pursued “can’t be my idea or any specific person’s idea,” he said — it must be an idea the community agrees upon.
Ridgeway Elementary, which is on Church Street, opened in the fall of 1929. It was built with eight classrooms and an auditorium at a cost of $35,000, according to Henry County archivist Desmond Kendrick.
Four rooms were added to the building in 1932 at a cost of $12,000, Kendrick said.
Henry County Schools officials have said Ridgeway Elementary was hard to heat and had traffic flow problems and limited space.
The school closed in June, and its students moved into the new Drewry Mason Elementary School — a renovated former high school and middle school built in the 1950s— a few miles away in August.
At 6 p.m. Tuesday, the Henry County Board of Supervisors will hold a public hearing to hear opinions on its planned disposition of Ridgeway Elementary.
However, the county will accept proposals until March 2, Summerlin said. Anyone wanting to buy the building should submit a proposal showing not only how much they are willing to pay for it, but also what they aim to do with it, to the county administrator’s office.
County officials at Thursday night’s meeting indicated they are not in a big hurry to sell the building. Summerlin said, though, that the longer it remains unused, the more likely it is to become dilapidated.
When the board of supervisors eventually decides who to sell the building to, the decision will not be based on who offers the most money, Ridgeway District Supervisor H.G. Vaughn said.
Rather, the decision will be based on whatever proposal “keeps it a viable building in this community as it has been for many years,” said Vaughn. |
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