EXTRA CONTENT: City shows no interest in Corbin East school; public housing option on the table

Read the letter sent to city officials by clicking here.

Passionate pleas to transform a venerable and vacant local school building into something useful have met with very little actual interest say Corbin school officials who are currently struggling to find anyone willing to take over the facility for a community purpose, but may instead have to declare it surplus property and put it on the auction block in the near future.

Corbin Independent Schools Superintendent Ed McNeel said he has had no response from Corbin city leaders to a letter sent to them on June 8 regarding Corbin East School, located on Master Street. The letter was drafted and sent by McNeel following an April meeting of the school district’s Board of Education where some community members, including a City Commissioner, argued against tearing the building down. School officials had never actually proposed the idea of demolishing the old school but the arguments against its destruction were made anyway.

"Really, the letter was just providing some information about the building to them and asking them if they had any interest in it," McNeel said. "We’ve not heard anything from them. I haven’t had any conversations with them [the city]."

During the April meeting, Corbin City Commissioner Dennis Lynch told members of the school board the city would be interested in possibly taking over the structure and tearfully argued for its preservation. Corbin Main Street Manager Sharae Myers also argued in favor of some sort of public use for the building, saying grant money could be secured to possibly make it a community center or something similar.

The letter invited city officials to tour the school, but McNeel said not one from the city has taken the school district up on the offer.

Lynch said Tuesday he wanted to go through the building with a local contractor but that nothing could ever be worked out. He also said he was told by someone to back off the idea of the city taking over the building because the Housing Authority of Corbin was interested in possibly using it for apartments. He would not say who told him the Housing Authority was interested in the building.

"They can get grants to redo that and try to make it a housing project for the city," Lynch said. "If we get it for housing or use it for some other programs, it doesn’t matter to me. Either one of those things is going to serve the same purpose for the city. That building needs to be used."

Lynch said he’s never actually spoken to Housing Authority of Corbin Director Dora Mobley or anyone else on the Housing Authority Board about the idea. Corbin Mayor Willard McBurney serves on the Housing Authority Board of Directors, but McNeel said he’s never been approached about the idea from anyone in city government.

Dora Mobley, Executive Director of the Housing Authority of Corbin, said she would like to see the old school used for public housing, but to say her organization has any definite plans to do so is premature.

"There is interest there, but it’s just kind of talk right now," Mobley said.

The Housing Authority has recently applied for a $331,000 grant to improve access for the disabled to some of its existing complexes. She said if that grant application is approved, and the group should know by early next month, then it could pave the way for another grant that would pay for the replacement of some of those units in favor of new housing at Corbin East.

"It’s a longshot, but we will know pretty soon if we can even try," Mobley said. "We would work with the city on this. They would help us."

She said city leaders have tentatively agreed to waive an $18,000 to $21,000 stipend the Housing Authority pays to the city annually. That money could be used to help fund the project.

Mobley said the school would make a good location for more housing because it has ample grounds surrounding the structure that could be used for parking.

The school and property encompasses 2.6 acres fronting Master Street. The facility itself is 25,000 square feet and two stories high. According to McNeel’s letter, the building required major renovation in the 1940s after it was damaged by fire. It was renovated again in the 1980s.

East School was closed from 1990-1993 and reopened as an alternative school in 1994 and was used for that purpose through 2008. It is currently closed and McNeel said it has no utility service at this time.

The building was given a rating of 5 by architects who evaluated using the Kentucky Department of Education’s facility standards criteria. This is the worst ranking that can be given to an educational facility in Kentucky.

The building’s condition could be a major hurdle, Corbin Board of Education Chair Debbie Cook said, to plans to make it a community center or museum or something similar.

"I’m afraid the general public may not realize the exact physical conditional of East," Cook said. "It would be very costly to do anything with it."

Cook said no one with the school system wants to "just bulldoze the property," but that the board may be forced to declare it as surplus so it can be legally sold.

Lynch said that aside from taxpayer funded options for the building; he does know several individuals who would like to buy it, but that they are unable to get a purchase price from the school district.

In the letter McNeel sent to the city of Corbin, he notes that in March the building and property had an appraised value of $892,000.

Both Lynch and Cook admit that if the building were sold it would not likely bring its appraised value on the open market.
School Board Member Todd Childers said this week that the board hasn’t officially discussed whether or not East will be declared surplus property or not. He said he has not been contacted by a single person in the community suggesting what should be done with the building.

"I would like to see the board do something with it constructive, whatever that may be, selling it or having a plan for it. I don’t have any particular plans myself," Childers said. "Whoever ends up owning it can decide what they want to do with it. We were hoping it would be the city but I guess they don’t have an interest in it."

Cook said the school district would almost certainly be unable to fund any plans for the building, calling it an unwise use of school system money.

"We really don’t have anything we can do. We don’t have the funding to turn it into a community center. We have to sink everything we’ve got into the educational facilities we are using," she said. "So I guess looking at it from that point of view, [declaring it surplus property] is the first thing we need to do."

Cook said she wants to have in depth discussions with other board members on the issue though before the move is made. She added that she understands fully why the city would be reluctant to take on the expense of renovating and managing the old school with its current financial commitments at the Southeast Kentucky Agriculture and Exposition Center.

"They’ve got a lot going on so I know where they are coming from," she said.