43
South Range schools to get new use
GREENFORD
A businessman and a beef-and-grain farmer are partners in a venture that will reuse two former South Range school buildings as business incubators.
The businessman, John Monroe, and the farmer, Edward Shaefer, owner of Shaefer Farms, both lifelong Greenford residents, have formed a partnership for that venture, known as Greenford Bobcats LLC, named for the former athletic team at the former South Range Middle School.
The buildings to be reused and saved from demolition are the former South Range Middle School, 7600 W. South Range Road, Greenford, and the former South Range High School and Elementary School complex at 11836 South Ave., North Lima.
Both buildings were vacated by the school district as it opened a new kindergarten-through-grade-12 complex on state Route 46 in Beaver Township at the beginning of this school year.
“We want to make this a really good community, a better place to live,” said Monroe, co-owner of Monroe Excavating Inc. of Greenford. “We want to fix them up and make them nicer than they have ever been,” he said of the former schools.
“We’re trying to help out new businesses,” he added.
The proposal to rezone the former middle-school property, known as the Greenford Bobcats Space Center, from residential and agricultural to commercial for the business-incubator effort will be considered in a special meeting of the Mahoning County Planning Commission at 10:30 a.m. Thursday at 50 Westchester Drive, Austintown.
That commission will hear a proposal to rezone the former high school and elementary-school property from rural residential to general commercial for the incubator project at its regular meeting at 1 p.m. Tuesday at the same location.
The planning commission will make a recommendation concerning the proposed rezoning at each building before the proposals go before the Green and Beaver township zoning boards, respectively, said Michael O’Shaughnessy, planning commission director.
Each township’s board of trustees will then make the final decision on the building in their jurisdiction, he added.
Monroe said the partnership wants speedy zone-change approvals because it hopes to get tenants into the buildings quickly to enable the partnership to cover winter heating costs.
Monroe said the partnership paid the school district $100,000 for the 60,000-square-foot former middle school and $85,000 for the 150,000-square-foot former high school and elementary school complex.
The partnership did not buy the football field or the park behind it at the former high and elementary-school complex. The school district still owns the football field and park.
The partnership is letting the schools use the bus garage at the former middle school for at least another year until the district can build a new bus garage, and it is letting the schools use the former middle-school gym, Monroe said. “We really want to help out the schools and the kids there as well,” Monroe explained.
A training program, in which professional baseball players teach the game to children, already is using part of the former middle school, Monroe said.
Among those who have committed to rent space in the former middle school are the new Small Wonders child day-care center, which hopes for occupancy by the end of January and for which space is now being renovated; a woodworking company that will use the former school wood shop; a physical therapist; and a restaurant and catering service.
No tenants have yet committed to the former school property in North Lima, Monroe said.