Will county commissioners exercise their right to buy historic school building?
Alamance-Burlington school officials have decided to declare the former Sellars-Gunn Education Center along Apple Street in Burlington as surplus property.
The proposed disposition of Sellars-Gunn will appear on the consent portion – which is typically reserved for noncontroversial items that are approved en masse – of the agenda for the school board’s next meeting in two weeks.
First, though, state law requires the school system to offer it to the county commissions “for purchase at fair market value,” ABSS superintendent Dr. Aaron Fleming told school board members during their latest work session Tuesday afternoon.
While school board members had discussed disposing of Sellars-Gunn early last month, the decision has been postponed until their next meeting on October 26 “so that the community could come out, if anybody wanted to share comments about the desires and uses for that building,” school board chairman Sandy Ellington-Graves said Tuesday.
Should the commissioners opt not to buy the property, the board could then proceed with selling it at a public auction or via one of several other methods outlined in a state law that governs disposal of surplus property owned by local governments, Fleming told the board Tuesday.
If the commissioners decided to purchase the Sellars-Gunn property, he said, “They would have to have some county use, such as a park” or another specific use for the site.
“Faith-based leaders and nonprofits” have expressed an interest in the property, but there have been no conversations with prospective developers, the superintendent said.
The current and previous ABSS administrations have pointed to mounting costs to operate Sellars-Gunn, namely up to $200,000 in yearly utility expenses, based on figures school officials cited during an earlier discussion, and a $7.4 million estimated cost for renovation that the school system had obtained in 2022.
Currently, Sellars-Gunn is used for academic and student services offices and as a “mini-warehouse” for the school system’s contracted janitorial company, MFM. It had served as the alternative school for ABSS until 2012, when it moved to Ray Street Academy in Graham.
“We do believe there’s significant historic value of the building,” Fleming acknowledged this week.
During an initial discussion last month, he said that the Alamance County African-American Cultural Arts and History Center had expressed an interest in acquiring Sellars-Gunn.
The former J.F. Gunn Elementary School and Jordan Sellars High School, which were built in 1942 and 1954, respectively, had served black students exclusively prior to desegregation.
Construction of both schools was financed by the Rosenwald Fund, a charitable foundation bankrolled by Julius Rosenwald (one of the original owners of Sears, Roebuck & Company) to build schools to educate black children, predominantly in the rural South.
Both schools were closed in the early 1970s, based on a historic marker that the Jordan Sellars Class Reunion and Historical Fund paid to have erected near the intersection of Apple and Rosenwald streets in Burlington in 2017.
ABSS chief operations officer Greg Hook reminded school board members during last month’s discussion that Sellars-Gunn requires significant repairs to meet current building codes.
The $7.4 million cost to renovate Sellars-Gunn that had been estimated in 2022 would’ve funded repairs to bring the building into compliance with current ADA regulations; asbestos abatement in existing classrooms and replacement of asbestos tile; new heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning systems throughout; new plumbing; new acoustical ceiling tiles with LED lighting; electrical upgrades; a new entrance façade and exterior window replacements; and resurfacing and re-striping the parking lot, based on a preliminary estimate that Pinnacle Architects of Matthews had developed for ABSS.
“It would convey as is,” Hook told the board Tuesday afternoon. “[There are] still areas that have tile with asbestos in it; I’m certain that there’s asbestos in the mastic, the glue down. There may be some lead paint. But it would be conveyed as is.”
Board members allude to interest in possible use for private school
School board member Seneca Rogers, who said during the earlier conversation that he’d like to see whether the former alumni group is interested in rehabilitating Sellars-Gunn, expressed concern this week about the possibility of it “being sold off to someone else” if the commissioners opted to buy it.
“I don’t want to see it be sold off as another school, say some private school. I’m pretty sure there are some folks that have that interest. The Jordan-Sellars alumni group, I would love to see them involved some way, maybe the African-American Cultural museum.”
– School board member Seneca Rogers
“I don’t want to see it be sold off as another school, say some private school,” Rogers said Tuesday. “I’m pretty sure there are some folks that have that interest. The Jordan-Sellars alumni group, I would love to see them involved some way, maybe the African-American Cultural museum.”
“My mom went to Central High School, which is now the place where Graham High School is,” Rogers added. “I’m pretty sure they would love to be a part of it.”
“I know there’s some potential interest with putting a private school there.”
– ABSS superintendent Dr. Aaron Fleming
Fleming said it would be up to the school board to decide on possible steps to involve those groups. “I know there’s some potential interest with putting a private school there,” he said, without giving specifics.
There has been no public discussion during any recent school board meetings about whether ABSS officials have been approached about the possibility of renovating the property for a private school.
“Like Seneca, I would not want to see another school put in that building,” board member Tameka Harvey said.
The school board’s attorney, Adam Mitchell of the Tharrington Smith law firm in Raleigh, reiterated that state law gives the county commissioners the right of first refusal to purchase the property. “That has to happen,” he said Tuesday. “I’m not aware of any restrictions we could place on it. If they [the commissioners] wanted to purchase it, they can purchase it.”
Mitchell said he’d research that dimension but said he’d “be surprised” if there was any way to attach restrictions to an offer to sell the property to the commissioners.
Generally, state law provides three methods of disposal of surplus property owned by local governments.
Those methods of disposal include: sealed bids, which requires the property to be advertised for sale at least 30 days; upset bids, by which the governing body adopts a resolution to accept an offer, setting off an upset period, in which the next bid must be at least 10 percent higher than the original bid, and continuing until no additional bids are submitted; and a public auction, either live or electronically, for which a public notice must be advertised at least 30 days in advance.
