Hometown Dumb

When I was a child, my hometown of Waverly, NY had three elementary schools, Lincoln Street, Ithaca Street, and Elm Street (although Elm Street school actually served as a kind of lower middle school, having 4th, 5th, and 6th grades exclusively). The school district offices were housed in an old school building, Mary Muldoon, the former high school (my father graduated from that school in 1939). At some point when I was in high school - I don't remember exactly when - the school district decided that, enrollments shrinking with the end of the Baby Boom, they wanted to consolidate the elementary schools and economize in other ways. They sold both Muldoon and and Ithaca Street schools. Muldoon was sold, over a period of years, to everyone from the county (it housed Village branch offices of a variety of county and state services), to various private owners who used it as office space (although they kept the gym in the basement; I remember playing pick-up basketball games there a few times). Ithaca Street became, first, a kind of nursing home ("extended care facility" I think it was called), then the offices of an independent laboratory, I don't know what all else.

Now, the Village wants to buy Ithaca Street School to house the Village offices because the building currently used in the business district doesn't work very well. Muldoon, which has sat empty for more years than it was actually in service by various owners, including the school district, is now owned by some developers who wish to turn it into . . . you guessed it, senior housing (they received approval from the zoning board for a special use permit).

The reason I've titled this post "dumb" is two-fold. When Ithaca Street was sold, my father was frustrated because, as I recall him saying at the time, either the school district or the Village would want the building back at some point. Sure enough, they are having to buy the building back, and have to spend quite a bit of taxpayer money to bring it up to code in the process (they applied for state and federal money to help out and were denied).

On the Muldoon school business there is a bit of hilarity in the linked article that kind of points out the absurdity of renovating the building for use.

The only concerns presented were from Pennsylvania Avenue neighbor Wendy Lougher, who asked about the property’s sagging wood fence and about plans for dealing with the wildlife that currently reside in the vacant building.(italics added)

When the current residents of a building are "wildlife", you know there are issues.

What makes this "dumb" is the property, which sits just east of the center of the village, includes a small park, complete with a bandshell. When I was a kid, the Village would make a little ice rink for kids to skate there; I don't know how long ago they stopped doing that, probably for reasons of liability, but that piece of land is now Village owned; with the arrival of a "senior residence", will the park go the way of the ice rink? In fact, I have to wonder about keeping the building in place all these years, vacant, a hotel for raccoons and opossums. The property could have been sold years ago, the building torn down and the entire thing made park space - trees planted, playground equipment, maybe that ice rink in winter, summer concerts in the bandshell - but, instead, the whole rigmarole of zoning board meetings, waiting on the new owners to get public monies for their renovation efforts (that's another point at issue; the current owners have applied for assistance for the renovation, and I have to wonder how far forward this is going to move if that money isn't forthcoming).

It's really kind of stupid.

Of course, local politics in most communities, large and small, is chock full of short-term thinking like this, infinite complications, and the always-fun waiting game for budgetary help from various state and federal agencies. That doesn't make it any less aggravating.