Central’s Value

Here’s a link to that email as it was sent to the Board describing how dependent the financing of the Red Plan was on selling our old schools. And how short we’ve fallen in those sales.

While our administration has not always been johnny on the spot about providing background info for we members of the Board minority I have made lots of very smart friends in my years of bird dogging the District and its ambitious plans. When one of them pointed out a 2012 DEDA report I put in a request to see it and yesterday read that it was soon to be provided to the entire school board. Similarly, my old ally found another article from that year which gives some background about how the City viewed the 77 acres of the Central site. Draw from it your own conclusions:

DNT, April 26, 2012

Duluth city planners, school district to discuss Central High site

A modified plan for land use at the former Central High School site off East Central Entrance will be discussed tonight at a public meeting.

Duluth city planners and representatives from the school district will talk with residents beginning at 5:30 p.m. in City Council chambers on the third floor of City Hall.

The city’s planning division has been working on the 77-acre site plan for the last two years; changes were made after the school district complained in January that the zoning had too little commercial area to get the best price from a potential developer.

The School Board sent the city three reasons it wanted the Planning Commission to hold off on recommending the plan:

•The plan did not fit with the district’s long-range plan for the Central site, namely that it get the most money it can from a developer “based on its highest and best use other than a school.”

•The district says the city plan “randomly divides” the 77-acre parcel without regard to existing platting, which the district said devalues the property.

•Without getting the best price for the property, property taxes would increase, something not in the public interest.

The original plan set aside 25 acres zoned for a business park at the site. The revised plan boosts that acreage to 43 acres. Conversely, the acreage for residential development went down to 12 acres from 14 and recreation land went to 25 acres from 34.

Before talks with the city, the school district drew up a plan that raised the developable acres to 66 from the city’s 39. The compromise acreage is now 55.

Comments from the meeting will be compiled and presented to the Planning Commission and School Board.

Planning division and Planning Commission members said in January that their decisions were not based on getting the most value from a site but on proper mixed-use zoning.

Any development on the site will still have to go through the zoning process when specific projects arise.

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