Fairview school going to YMCA - Klamath Falls, OR
N 42° 13.991 W 121° 47.141
10T E 600199 N 4676380
Less than a year after closing, Fairview Elementary School has a new home, being donated to the local YMCA. It is located on Donald Street.
Waymark Code: WMK9NJ
Location: Oregon, United States
Date Posted: 03/05/2014
Views: 2
The following comes from the
Herald and News newspaper:
Publish date: Jan. 14, 2014
Fairview school going to YMCA
Less than a year after its closing, Fairview school will have a new use and a new owner. The Klamath Falls City Schools board of directors decided to give the 84-year-old school to the YMCA of
Klamath Falls. “We’re going to let them have the building,” superintendent Paul Hillyer said Monday morning, before the evening
meeting when the school board made the official decision. “We felt it’s a real good community resource for that part of town.”
Fairview Elementary, located at 1017 Donald St., closed at the end of
the 2012-13 school year. The YMCA will use the building for daycare services and athletic programs. Hillyer said the district has
been discussing the transfer with the YMCA for about three months. “If they have a use for that building, it would help that neighborhood,” Hillyer said. “It would be in the best interest of the community to let them have that facility.” It took the school board only three minutes to approve a resolution to surplus the property and transfer ownership to the YMCA. All but one board member approved
the transfer. Lori Theros abstained from the vote.
Giving away a school
The school district didn’t have the value of Fairview Elementary, built in 1920. “The value of an old school building is hard to determine,” said district business director Pat Baldini. In 2012, the district sold the Riverside school for $79,000. Baldini
said it had started with a list price of $400,000. It took two years before it sold for the reduced price. “The true value of a building is
what you can sell it for,” Hillyer said. “It’s very difficult to sell a school building.” At the evening meeting, Hillyer said official transfer documents will be drawn up this week. He estimated the official transfer will be complete by February.
Saving costs for the district
Hillyer hopes giving the Fairview school to the YMCA will save the district $20,000 a year in the bare-bones maintenance of the building. It cost the district $20,000 a year for heat, upkeep and insurance on the Riverside school, and he estimated the cost would have been the same at Fairview. When asked why the district is giving
Fairview away instead of leasing it to the YMCA, Hillyer said:
“We just thought it would be less complicated if we allow them to have
the building rather than lease it out. It’s just one more thing we have to keep track of and maintain over time. We’d really like to have fewer buildings, rather than more buildings.”
Interesting facts:
Built: 1920
Acreage: 2.6
Size: 39,448 square feet
Decision to close: Oct. 8, 2012
Last day of school: June 11, 2013