Pretty Picture huh?
I just found this in the 30 page report that ISD 709 paid for when an alert reader sent a story to me about this evaluation of the Central location. I immediately put in a demand/request to see it and today it was sent to me and the other school board members. Actually, ISD 709 will pay DEDA for our half of the cost of the report when we sell the Central site.
We have been talking about selling Central for two years and more since I got on the School Board. In the last six weeks that discussion has become heated. Yesterday I argued with a School Board colleague about whether our Board had been given all the information it needed to make a decision to sell the property. I argued that it had not been provided let alone discussed in public. My colleague was convinced that we had heard everything of importance to justify the 3-4 vote we rushed to decline a $14.2 million dollar offer.
This report, never to my knowledge shared with the School Board, is pretty damning evidence that we as a Board are or have been kept clueless. Its not an exhaustive report and it is speculative. What could we do with all 77 acres. It argues that only a little over 30 of the acres are develop-able. I presume that this is above the existing footprint of the existing schools. And yet it argues against developing some of the land that is currently forest because it is an important barrier to prevent flooding during heavy rains. I would like to have known that. If anything it would make me want to put a proviso in a sale preventing such development.
It also throws water on the reuse of Central High itself. It presumes the school will be demolished…..not a surprise from recent discussions.
The picture above is of a “switchback” like road for residential development from the lip of the hill down to other residential areas. It looks rather like San Francisco’s Lombard street in this diagram. Its made to entice a developer but one nibbled at the whole site for $10 million and dropped the offer. Some of the Board members seem to be hanging on to this site like stockholders to worthless stock just in case the market makes a come back. We aren’t developers.
The fellow who bought the Woodland site for $3 million, which we hoped to sell for $6 million, turned around and sold a small parcel of the site to St. Scholastica for over $2 million. He’s a developer. He’s fleet enough of foot to have done what we would be hard pressed to do. As for the Board. Well, the Administration’s seeming reluctance to answer our questions makes me feel like chopped liver.
