Former school property could be sold

It is not immediately known what Schulte plans to do with the property, if the purchase takes place.

“The proposed purchase agreement would be a nice win for the city based on the potential of selling the entire former Morton site at a good market rate, and it would also allow us to pay down additional principal on the existing Stonequarry Crossings debt,” said Greg Shackelford, assistant city manager. “We would also retain a very good corporate citizen in the community, providing the opportunity for growth.”

The purchase price of the property is approximately $396,000.

The option period expires Dec. 31 unless extended by mutual written agreement.

“We will know before December what our intentions are with the property,” Schulte said.

City council voted earlier this year to rezone the West National Road site from “public facilities” to “office services planned unit development overlay” as an effort to accelerate the process of developing the site.

Now that the resolution has been approved, the next step for the city is to wait for Schulte’s company to complete its site survey, according to Shackelford.

“It’s really a waiting game for us now to allow the prospective company time to complete its due diligence efforts on the site,” Shackelford said.

He said the site “would be developed in a way that would be very aesthetically pleasing to the downtown market.”

The Morton Middle School building opened Jan. 22, 1922, according to the Historical Society of Vandalia-Butler.

Vandalia-Butler City Schools closed the middle school in December of 2011 due to age, according to Traci Hale Brown, the district’s director of communications.

“They celebrated the building’s 75th anniversary in the mid 90s,” Hale Brown said.

The building was demolished in June 2012 as a result of a land swap deal that the city had with the school district, and a new middle school was built at 8555 Peters Pike near Stonequarry Road that opened in January of 2012.

“The city and the district traded the National Road land for the Peters Pike land. As part of the land swap, the old Morton building and bus garage land was traded for the land the new Morton and bus garage are now located,” Hale Brown said.

“We swapped approximately 20 acres for the site (at 231 W. National Road),” Shackelford said.

He added that the cost of the 2012 demolition of the old school building was absorbed by the school district as a part of the land swap agreement.