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Austintown schools, Fitch family heirs agree to settlement on old school
By ROBERT CONNELLY
AUSTINTOWN
Austintown school officials have agreed to an out-of-court settlement with the family of John Fitch allowing the school to sell the old school building at 5800 Mahoning Ave.
That announcement was made after a unanimous Austintown Board of Education vote Friday morning to approve a “mutual release and settlement” agreement.
The school board sought to have a clear deed to the property last spring in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court and agreed to this deal after mediation.
“After a lot of struggling, after much wasted expense to us and to everyone else involved” in this process, “I think it’s going to be a great deal and will be a positive move for the township – no question,” said Dr. David Ritchie, school board member.
“This is the right thing to do for the district, including the taxpayers and the students we serve, and will pave the way for the eventual sale” of that 15.2-acre property, said Kathy Mock, school board president.
This allows the school and the Fitch family “to collaboratively move forward to sell the property. Then we’ll sit down with the heirs and try to come up with the dollar amount that would be fair for them and fair for the Austintown community,” said Vincent Colaluca, schools superintendent.
“People pay for their names to be on something. We really believe that John Fitch, a long time ago, paid for that name to be on our Fitch High School,” Colaluca said, comparing it to the recent naming of Fitch stadium after Greenwood Chevrolet. “When we moved in 1968, and I wasn’t here, but somewhere along the way the board decided to keep that name and, in essence, he paid for that name to stay on the building and our school name.”
According to Vindicator files, the school district took title to the property in 1924. A warranty deed granting the land to the district from John Fitch and his wife, Alice, was written in 1915, but not recorded until 1924.
The Fitch family heirs had argued that the site would be transferred back to the family if it was not used for educational purposes. The district attempted to sell the property in 2005 but was stopped because of concern over underground fuel storage tanks; and in 2013, when another development corporation rescinded its offer for an unspecified reason.
“That’s our most commercially viable piece of property,” said Mal Culp, Austintown schools supervisor of facilities and operations. “We’ve already met the state requirements for” public auctions at the old Fitch building and “we can directly sell to anyone that comes forward at this point.”
The board also unanimously approved plans to have an auction for the sale of Davis, Lloyd and Woodside properties, varying between 9 and 12 acres, and a 5-acre district-owned property on Woodridge Drive near Lynn-Kirk Elementary School, 4211 Evelyn Road. Davis is on Maple Avenue, Lloyd is on Norquest Boulevard about a block behind the Austintown Plaza, 6000 Mahoning Ave., and Woodside is on Elmwood Drive. All three properties were cleaned and left with open grass fields after being demolished when the new schools were built on one campus.
“I’ve had quite a few inquiries on the Lloyd property ... that’s a nice residential area,” Culp said.
In the coming weeks there will be advertisements for the auction and set minimum bids for each, which are still to be determined. Culp said the auction for each property would happen at the same time and could take place at the school board offices off Raccoon Road.
Proceeds from the building sales would go into the capital improvement fund, which is limited to projects that would be useful for more than five years, such as a new roof, blacktop paving or an infrastructure improvement.
The district also approved the $2,200 sale of a small piece of property on North Four Mile Run to Jack and Sallie Kumic of Lanterman Road.