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CELINA - School board members are now open to the possibility of selling the education complex/Fieldhouse, football field and a sliver of land on College Avenue in order to bring overall master plan costs down.
Board members in March 2025 voted to spare the life of the iconic but outdated Fieldhouse to make use of its locker rooms and other amenities, yet emphasized that high school basketball games will be played in a new gymnasium once the grades 7-12 school building is completed.
However, at a work session Aug. 4, board members learned from Matt Hibner, Garmann Miller's director of architecture, that the total potential project scope of items constituting the master plan - including new track and field facility, new football stadium at the track, renovations to the high school Tri Star building, and more - are roughly $20.89 million.
The school has a remaining locally funded initiative (LFI)/locally funded other (LFO) budget of $8.65 million. On top of that, they have a total of $4.01 million in other potential future funding opportunities, including local share of interest to be returned and funds from the Jerry Andrew Fund in care of the Mercer County Civic Foundation.
A new track and field facility estimated at $4.2 million and a new football stadium at the track and field facility estimated at $3.347 million are likely to be pursued, based on past school board conversations, but much of the rest of the master facilities plan is still up in the air due to the high cost and limited budget.
Whatever path the board eventually settles on, if the school board were able to unload the education building/Fieldhouse rather than make minimal renovation to the structure, it would save $1.7 million. Moreover, if the education complex/Fieldhouse is not abated and demolished, the district would get back its 51% of co-funded dollars from the state, roughly $460,000.
"I think for right now we either got to let it sit or go proceed with the idea of sell it. I don't see that being a long-term useful facility for the district, I really don't," said board member Carl Huber at the work session.
"I think one of two things: You sell it or you level it," added board member Mark Huelsman. "Because that half million dollars the state's going to contribute has value. Now we don't have to talk about it anymore. We don't have to worry about it. Leaving an empty building like that sit is not prudent, I don't think."
The subject was revisited at Monday night's regular school board meeting.
"We talked at our work session about potentially looking at what it would be if we were to put the Fieldhouse up for auction," said board president Adam Schleucher. "That does not mean that we have to sell it. It just means that we can look to explore what the value is and get a fair market value on that."
The question Schleucher posed was rather to auction off the property as one parcel or three - everything under roof as one parcel, the football field as another parcel and a sliver of land used for parking on College Avenue.
"If we're going to look at this, do we look at it as three separate parcels, and if it did go out for a public bid, a potential buyer would have the opportunity to bid on one, two or all three parcels," Schleucher said. "Now just because somebody bid on it, we do not have to sell any of it. We would say we want to sell one and not the other, or we could say, thanks but no thanks, and the district keeps the whole thing. So this is not committing us to anything. All it is allowing us to do is have the conversation to see …. is there outside investors that would be interested in the property and … what kind of value would be put on that."
Board members ultimately agreed to potentially auction the property as three parcels.
Superintendent Brooke Gessler said the administration will now proceed to survey the property and have a public appraisal conducted. In order to to put the property up for bid, board members would have to approve a resolution authorizing the move and place conditions on the parcels, such as the district maintaining use of the football field until it is ready to move into a new facility.
