The Clarke County College District is trying to promote two historic homes on the previous Piedmont School campus it purchased to function its central workplace in 2020. A 3rd, nonetheless, may very well be moved, as a result of CCSD directors need to put a brand new constructing as an alternative for college students to register.
CCSD has utilized for a rezoning from institutional to business workplace for one constructing (Rogers Corridor, going through Prince Avenue) and residential-multifamily for an additional (the Mitchell Home, going through Hill Avenue). A listening to earlier than the Athens-Clarke County Planning Fee is scheduled for Thursday, Apr. 7, however each buildings are already listed on the market. CCSD is asking $900,000 for Rogers Corridor and $400,000 for the Mitchell Home.
The third constructing is called Ellard Corridor, and it faces the parking zone. CCSD is in search of a purchaser to maneuver that constructing as a result of directors decided that renovating it will be dearer than constructing anew.
A primary renovation would value $384,000, Director of SPLOST John Gilbreath informed college board members at a Mar. 2 work session, however to deliver the constructing as much as CCSD requirements would value $1.7 million. Developing a brand new constructing with a bigger footprint extra acceptable for scholar registration, together with a handful of Individuals with Disabilities Act-compliant workplaces on the second ground, would value $1.4 million, he mentioned.
“Isn’t there a center floor?” college board member Tim Denson requested. Gilbreath famous the single-paned home windows, asbestos within the basement and lead paint beneath the vinyl exterior of a constructing the place kids might be current. “Plenty of the unique traits that made that home historic are not there,” he mentioned. However that’s true of many historic buildings in Athens, together with some on campus that function workplaces, Denson replied.
CCSD is promoting the opposite two outbuildings for comparable causes. “Each homes have been put up on the market as a result of they don’t seem to be actually fitted to workplace area or institutional use,” spokesperson Cyndee Moore mentioned. “They aren’t ADA accessible and include lead paint. Additional, the crawl areas are uncooked grime and would require mitigation efforts to be able to make them appropriate for CCSD. Briefly, to deliver them as much as the requirements required by CCSD can be fairly costly.”
The varsity board has not but decided on Ellard Corridor. Some Cobbham residents are lobbying the district to maintain it as a gesture of goodwill to the encircling neighborhood. But there may be additionally some concern of a protracted political stalemate much like the West Broad College, which has sat vacant for greater than a decade as a result of college board members, ACC commissioners, nonprofits, and 4 college superintendents and counting can’t agree on how one can use the property and even how a lot will be preserved.
On the suggestion of former superintendent Xernona Thomas, CCSD purchased the Piedmont School campus—beforehand Prince Avenue Baptist Church, now situated in Oconee County—for $8.2 million. The district had been trying to find a extra centrally situated headquarters ever since former superintendent Philip Lanoue, in search of a extra accessible location, bought the Mitchell Bridge Street constructing, a former hospital, to Athens Behavioral Well being Programs and relocated the administration to the H.T. Edwards complicated in 2015. That constructing proved too small to share with the profession heart; the West Broad College lacked parking; and the college board shot down former superintendent Demond Means’ proposal to buy a constructing on Milledge Avenue for $11 million in a deal brokered by an actual property agent who was among the many college board members that employed Means. Piedmont College is now housed within the four-story Normaltown constructing the place Allen’s and Foxz Tavern was.
Say, Say, Say
4 years after the upcoming demolition of the Saye Constructing downtown spurred Athens-Clarke County commissioners to create a historic district across the Sizzling Nook space, First United Methodist Church nonetheless desires to tear down the constructing.
The church appealed county planning workers’s rejection of an software to demolish the constructing. Jake Evans, First United Methodist’s lawyer, argued at hearings final month that the appliance ought to have been permitted as a result of the church utilized for the demolition allow earlier than the fee declared a moratorium on downtown demolitions.
ACC officers, nonetheless, mentioned that workers acted correctly as a result of the allow had not been permitted when the fee declared the moratorium in January 2019. Commissioner Melissa Hyperlink had positioned a 90-day maintain on the allow.
Whereas a number of members of the Hearings Board—a seven-member physique that weighs requests for minor zoning variances and hears appeals of workers selections—mentioned they disagreed with the best way the fee went about creating the historic district, ACC attorneys mentioned they couldn’t second-guess coverage, solely rule on whether or not workers utilized it appropriately. Legal professionals for the county additionally mentioned the church ought to have as a substitute requested the Historic Preservation Fee for permission to demolish the constructing. The board denied the attraction.
The Saye Constructing, situated on the nook of Hancock Avenue and Lumpkin Avenue, is about 100 years outdated, with an addition that dates again to the Forties. If the constructing is torn down, First Methodist plans to make use of the property as a parking zone.
Extra on the Mall
Possibly you will have questions in regards to the redevelopment of Georgia Sq. Mall, or nonetheless don’t fairly get this entire tax allocation district factor. Regardless of the purpose on your curiosity, you may get your questions answered at a Federation of Neighborhoods assembly on Monday, Apr. 10. Commissioner Jesse Houle and faculty board members Linda Davis and Mumbi Anderson—all members of the Mall Space Redevelopment Committee—in addition to Scott Haines, the panorama architect for the challenge, might be available to elucidate the redevelopment and what it means for Atlanta Freeway. The occasion begins at 7:30 p.m. within the Lab at Ciné.
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