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Austintown schools, Meijer grocer enter letter of intent on old AMS building
By ROBERT CONNELLY
AUSTINTOWN
The Austintown school board has entered into a brokerage agreement and letter of intent with grocer Meijer on the old school building at 5800 Mahoning Ave.
The agreement allows 180 days for Meijer Stores Limited Partnership to evaluate the site to see if it is manageable for the grocery-store chain. According to Meijer’s website, there are 41 stores in Ohio, and those are concentrated in the Columbus, Dayton, Cincinnati and Toledo markets.
The letter of intent is the first step to sell the building that was once Fitch High School and then most recently Austintown Middle School.
If Meijer agrees the site is suitable, a sale price would be determined, and then the school district would negotiate with the descendants of John Fitch and give a percentage of the sale to that family, per the school board’s settlement with that family this summer.
Meijer “had a broker that’s been reaching out to us while we were working through the legal issues” at that site, said Vincent Colaluca, Austintown schools superintendent. “This is going to be a very long process. Even though we’re entering this agreement to move forward, it’s still a year out before anything is settled.”
The vote to enter into the agreement was unanimous by the board during a special meeting Tuesday afternoon.
Board President Kathy Mock said any profits from building or property sales goes into the capital improvement fund, which can only be used on upgrades that would have an impact for more than five years.
Examples of that work include a new roof or road paving or other infrastructure upgrades.
That means building-sale profits would not go to employee contracts or short-term items.
In other business, a public auction has yet to be set for the sale of the former building sites that have been vacant since Austintown schools merged onto one campus. Colaluca said the public auction will need to be advertised for three weeks before it happens.
“I know that they’ve been interested in coming to the Northeast Ohio area,” Mock said of Meijer. “The monies will come back into the school district ... will also help the whole community. That structure has been there for so long and it will be beneficial for that to go back to a green space and hopefully something even better.”
“It can move us forward as a community, and not only as a school, because we know that’s a valuable piece of property that’s not being utilized to benefit the community,” Colaluca said.
The board also approved the purchase of two used buses from Cardinal Bus Sales and Service for $42,000.
Colaluca said the purchase was made because the district did not have enough buses for the district’s athletic teams.