Don’t tear down the D.L. Barnes building Kettering

There are two things I can’t stand, stupidity and lack of creativity.

The Kettering School board is exhibiting both.

Demolition of the 93-year-old D.L. Barnes building is planned by Kettering City Schools next year as part of up to $5 million in capital improvement projects.

Tearing down the building at 3750 Far Hills Ave. — which was once a high school and backs up to Kettering’s football stadium — will cost an estimated $2.1 million. The site would be used for green space, according to the school district.

It is the most expensive project on a tentative list for a 10-year deal the board of education approved Tuesday night to finance the work, district records show. A few years ago, district officials said fully renovating the Barnes building would cost close to $17 million.

Source: Demolition of 93-year-old building part of Kettering schools’ $5M deal

It’s as if the local demolition mafia bought themselves a school board. Why you’d spend $2.1M demolishing a historic, well constructed, decently maintained public property to make an empty lot, before offering the building at auction for a developer is criminal.

In case they have heard, there are other old school buildings that have been repurposed in the area and done quite well. Oh, wait, isn’t that what the Rosewood arts complex is?

Or Hawthorne School in the McPherson town neighborhood. Or Huffman Place in the Huffman Historic District. Here’s a whole site dedicated to old schools converted to housing.

Or, maybe someone wants to open a charter school, in an actual school building? Could this be Dayton Stem School’s South location? Their first conversion of a retail box store was an expensive debacle too.

Where did the $17M estimate come from? Maybe we need to talk to the people in Zanesville who figured out a way to do it for “too much” – but under $6M. Considering a former newspaper plant just up the street was turned into a nursing facility, do you think that one of the nursing home chains might find that location desirable?

Something smells really bad about this decision. If I was a Kettering resident, I’d be asking some serious questions, like “are you out of your cotton picking minds.”

If you enjoyed reading true breaking news, instead of broken news from the major media in Dayton, make sure you subscribe to this site for an email every time I post. If you wish to support this blog and independent journalism in Dayton, consider donating. All of the effort that goes into writing posts and creating videos comes directly out of my pocket, so any amount helps! Please also subscribe to the Youtube channel for notifications of every video we launch – including the livestreams.