8/4/14 College Heights School

(0804 College Hgts School.)

970 WBLF. I’m Wes Richards with some thoughts on the College Heights School.

For awhile there, it looked like there was going to be another Garman Theater type battle over the College Heights School on North Atherton Street.

But we have dodged that dodgy bullet.

The school district owns the thing.  It hasn’t been used as a school in quite awhile.  It sits there chewing up maintenance dollars.

So when the save-the-children federation a.k.a the school board decided, finally to sell it, Penn State stepped up the plate with a bag of money.

But wait.  Like pretty much anything else around here, the boro said “not so fast,” and  reminded one and all that it had first right of refusal.

A group called CASE, the Collaboration of Arts, Social Services and Education stepped up with an empty money bag and announced “we want the place.”

So the boro decided to exercise its right of first refusal and offered to lease the school to CASE.  CASE said “oh goodie” and started figuring out how to raise the money to fill that empty bag.

And then it learned that the cost of bringing the building up to code and making other repairs could run into more than 1.5 million dollars. And donations weren’t exactly rolling in.  

Big donors evidently don’t like to put big donations into rentals.

So CASE gave up the case and Penn State has a clear path to buy the school.  It’s expensive.  But it’s not THAT expensive.  $450-thousand.  Chump change to the school on the hill.  So, maybe two million overall including those code repairs.

Figure another few hundred thousand for cost overruns.  And even that is not a big bite for Penn State.

People who use the North Atherton corridor can brace for more traffic, of course.  And driving around bulky construction projects.

With the CVS under construction at Cherry Lane and the in/out driveways of Panera at Vairo Blvd.-- also new -- and the awkward turn from the Champs bar… and that traffic-slowing steep hill into Wendy’s and the additional traffic around Lumber Liquidators and the supposedly imminent work on the road itself… we’re in for a slow ride.

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®