Kanawha County Schools is auctioning off two shuttered schools on Charleston's West Side Wednesday.
Alan Cummings, the school system's purchasing director, said the separate auctions will take place at the schools' addresses: Watts Elementary, at 230 Costello St., Charleston, 25302, will be auctioned at 10 a.m., and J.E. Robins Elementary, at 915 Beech Avenue, Charleston, 25302, will be auctioned at 11:30 a.m.
The schools, both about 80 years old, closed at the end of the 2013-14 school year, and their students were transferred to the new Edgewood Elementary. Both have also been subjected to vandalism and complaints from neighbors, though the school system only boarded them up around the end of May of this year.
"The goal is to just move the buildings as quickly as possible, to benefit the community," Cummings told a reporter Friday. "You've seen the condition that they're in and they're only getting worse, and we want to get what we can while we're still able to auction them. So we are moving quickly on it."
Cummings said the minimum bids for the schools and the parcels they sit on are the same as the appraised values calculated for them around June of 2015: $53,000 for Watts and $76,000 for Robins. He said the appraised values haven't been adjusted to reflect any damage.
He previously told the Gazette-Mail that once the school system got a fair offer for the schools, it would call an auction and set that as the minimum bid.
But he said Friday that, while the school system has received calls expressing interest in the schools, "nothing ever solidified." Still, he said he anticipates the properties will sell.
"We just hope that whoever purchases these buildings, it will be of benefit to the community," Cummings said.
He said if the highest bid is above the minimum bid in an auction, the school system will have to sell the property to that bidder. But if the highest bid is still below the minimum, he said the Kanawha school board will be able to decide whether to sell the property for that price.
In late May, the Gazette-Mail reported on the condition of the properties, which were littered with garbage and had shattered glass from where trespassers broke windows to enter the schools, along with other damage. An intercom system at Watts had been torn out of the wall, and Keith Vititoe, the school system's security director, said someone started a trash can fire in Watts.
According to records from Kanawha County Metro 911, Charleston police had responded to two dozen complaints at Watts and Robins over the past 12 months. Call types included breaking and entering, fire alarms, suspicious activity and burglary.
Vititoe said Friday that he hasn't gotten any calls from Metro 911 regarding the schools since they were boarded up. Terry Hollandsworth, Kanawha County Schools' maintenance director, has said the buildings weren't previously boarded up because that makes such large structures unsightly.
Kanawha school board member Becky Jordon said she also hasn't gotten as many calls about the buildings since they were boarded up, but she said that, sitting vacant, they are an eyesore the West Side community shouldn't have to deal with.
"We owe it to the community to either try to sell those schools or, if we don't sell them, we've got to do something with them," Jordon said. "I'd support anything to get rid of those schools."
Reach Ryan Quinn at ryan.quinn@wvgazettemail.com, facebook.com/ryanedwinquinn, 304-348-1254 or follow @RyanEQuinn on Twitter.
