School officials tepid on plan to demolish Asa Wood

A plan to demolish the Asa Wood Elementary School building to make way for an assisted living facility is losing favor with the Libby Public School Board.

Superintendent Ron Goodman said American Covenant Senior Housing Foundation's latest proposal to raze the structure has left him with more questions than answers. A month after Goodman announced the plan to the school board, the logistics of the demolition project remain hazy.

The proposal calls for the foundation to purchase the lot for $547,000. The school district would be responsible for covering the costs of cleaning up hazardous material on the site up to $530,000.

Exactly what the school district’s role would be in carrying out the work remains unclear as well as the cost, Goodman said during a Jan. 4 school board meeting.

After discussing the plan in a meeting with Gerald Fritts, chief executive officer for the foundation, Goodman said he couldn’t see how the proposal would benefit the school district. With the number of contaminants in the defunct elementary school building, Goodman expects the demolition project will be complicated.

“We all know what’s in those cinder blocks,” he said. “This is not vermiculite, it is tremolite asbestos.”

An August 2020 inspection of Asa Wood found 13 building materials that tested positive for asbestos and an additional six that were assumed to contain asbestos. Inspectors found significant amounts of lead-based paint both on the inside and outside of the structure. They also confirmed that four thermostats contain mercury.

Due to its complexity, the project is likely to cost close to the $530,000 ceiling. This would leave the school district with next to no return on the sale. The school district also relies on a kitchen in the Asa Wood building to prepare meals for students. Goodman was still unsure if a new kitchen would be included in the demolition deal.

The school board is considering another alternative for the property, which would keep the building intact. In October, the district applied to the EPA’s Brownfields grant program to help cover the cost of restoring the structure. This spring, the EPA will award roughly 26 grants for clean up projects nationwide this year. Goodman said the outlook for the school district’s proposal is “very positive.”

If the Libby project is among the Brownfields grant winners, the school district would have to contribute roughly $100,000 to clean up the structure and an underground storage tank on the property. But they would walk away with a clean building, which Goodman said would greatly increase its selling price. Since the district has three years to pay off their share of the grant, Goodman said some of the profits from the sale could be used to cover the expense.

A downside to restoring the building through the Brownfields program is that the school district would be responsible for the structure’s upkeep until the project’s completion in October 2022. Goodman previously said that this timeline would put some financial strain on the school district; the diesel fuel needed to heat the school alone costs up to $20,000 annually.

American Covenant representatives previously proposed a plan to construct an assisted living facility within the existing building. Fritts said the facility would house 45 units and create around 22 jobs. Under the plan, the foundation would allow the district and other community groups to keep using the property. The site would accommodate a 5,000 square-foot pantry and a kitchen for the school district.