City board moves to raze 2 more schools

By Harold Gwin

YOUNGSTOWN — The city school board is moving forward with plans to raze two more old school buildings.

The board has voted to pay $10,200 to Olsavsky Jaminet Architects Inc. to prepare the demolition documents for the Adams School on Cooper Street.

Princeton School on Hillman Street is the second being targeted, and demolition documents for it will come before the school board later this month, said Tony DeNiro, assistant superintendent of school business affairs.

Adams is vacant, but Princeton is being temporarily occupied by the Alpha School of Excellence, which will be moving into the new Wilson Middle School now under construction on Benita Avenue. That building is to be ready for fall 2010.

Materials used in the construction of both Adams and Princeton contain asbestos, which must be carefully removed under controlled conditions before the structures can be razed.

The school board also awarded contracts of $56,000 for the project design for the asbestos abatement at Adams and $85,500 for the project design for abatement at Princeton to Gandee & Associates Inc. of Akron. Gandee has done the abatement design work for other schools razed under the school district’s $190 million school rebuilding program.

Once the documents are prepared, the district can seek bids for the asbestos removal and then bids for the actual building demolitions. The total cost for taking down Princeton and Adams has been estimated at about $2.1 million.

The Ohio School Facilities Commission is picking up 80 percent of the demolition expenses, including the contract preparation work.

Wilson Middle School is the 13th and final new or remodeled/expanded school on the city school district’s list.

The district has already razed a dozen old buildings as part of the overall project and is in the process of tearing down three others — West Elementary on North Hazelwood Avenue, Hillman School on Myrtle Avenue and John White School on Lyden Avenue.

Those already gone are: Bennett, Bunn, Cleveland, East, Harding, Jackson, King, North, Rayen, Taft, Volney Rogers and Wilson.

gwin@vindy.com