Austintown school for sale again

District officials said they’re trying to fix busing problems.

By JEANNE STARMACK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

AUSTINTOWN — If you want 15 acres of prime commercial real estate along busy Mahoning Avenue, then the Austintown School District can fix you up.

The school board voted Thursday to let Superintendent Doug Heuer put the old Austintown Middle School back on the market after a deal with local developers Ben Post and Martin Solomon fell through.

The developers, under the company name This Land Is My Land Ltd., agreed to buy the property for $2.6 million in September 2005, and the school district had given them until August to close on it. The district was notified Sept. 7 that the company wanted out of the deal.

Board President Michael Creatore said the board is frustrated and disappointed over the deal’s collapse. He said the company wants a $260,000 deposit it paid in 2005 returned. Creatore said the district will not return it.

Post confirmed to The Vindicator in 2005 that the school district had it in writing that the deposit was nonrefundable.

Heuer said financing for a new bus garage on the district’s main campus off Idaho Road isn’t threatened by the deal collapse. Money from the sale of the school was supposed to help pay for the garage. But the district needs to have the money back in the long run, he said.

Heuer said that he will decide whether the district should sell the property on its own, put it up for auction or use a real estate company.

It was after an auction in 2005, during which there were no bidders, that Post and Solomon made their offer. Also making an offer was CDC Development of Dallas. An agent for that company, Cleveland real estate broker Hal Reisenfeld, bid $3 million. But CDC did not want to offer a nonrefundable 10 percent deposit because of concerns about the cost of cleaning up the property. CDC was concerned about what it would find when it went to tear the old school building down, such as asbestos and underground storage tanks.

Creatore said Thursday that Post and Solomon agreed to accept the property “as is.” Nonetheless, he said, the company tried to negotiate a $600,000 price reduction. The board countered with a $50,000 reduction, and This Land asked for $300,000. “They wanted the board to have additional cleanup costs,” Creatore said.

Then came the Sept. 7 letter.

Creatore said that the district won’t “discount” the property. “We’ll work to achieve the maximum value the market will allow,” he said.

Neither Post nor Solomon were available to comment Thursday.

In other business, the board and administrators said they are doing their best to fix problems that have many children arriving home late from school.

Marnie Fisher, who has two children in Frank Ohl Intermediate School, said her daughter was in tears after the first day, when she got home at 5:30 p.m. She says she picks up her children now so they don’t miss appointments after school.

But the district said that hour delays the first week of school are dwindling now to between eight- and 10-minute delays. They said that unforeseen problems can make buses late.

Heuer noted a bus running late from a nonpublic school one day last week held up nine other buses waiting for it at St. Joseph School, a district transfer point. He also said bus drivers who suspect no one is home to meet an elementary school child will call the transportation center, which tries to contact parents. He said that sometimes, children are brought back to the schools in those cases.