SCHOOLS Board buys 3 properties to start new buildings

Two of the properties are near Warren G. Harding High School.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- The city school board approved spending $454,500 to buy property to build new school buildings.
At a special meeting Tuesday, board members approved the purchase of three properties.
"They were all based on appraised prices," said Linda Metzendorf, board president.
The board paid $29,500 for a nearly four-acre wooded tract located behind the Warren Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses Kingdom Hall building near McGuffey Elementary School on Tod Avenue. The property was owned by the congregation.
Elm Road lots
The other two properties the district purchased are near the Warren G. Harding High School site.
The board also approved a resolution to pay $125,000 for a lot at 806 Elm Road owned by George W. and Trudy L. Thompson of Cortland.
The property includes a house and a garage, which both will be razed to make way for the new high school.
The other property, at 790 Elm Road and 800 Elm Road, includes a used car lot and is owned by Phillip A. and William J. Mazza. The board approved a resolution to pay $300,000 for that property.
The resolution allows the Mazza brothers occupancy and use of the property until March 2005.
Lincoln and McGuffey elementary schools mark the first sites where new kindergarten through eighth-grade buildings will be constructed.
Current schools at the Lincoln and McGuffey sites won't close until the new schools are constructed and open.
Last November, district voters approved a bond issue to provide roughly 20 percent local share of a $170 million project to build all new city schools.
The Ohio School Facilities Commission is providing 80 percent of the project cost. Included in the cost is money for property acquisition.
The plan is to build five new kindergarten through eighth-grade schools and a new high school.
denise_dick@vindy.com