Menu
Jones School set for sale to developer
There remain i’s to dot and t’s to cross — fitting for a building where generations of local children learned to read and write — but Jones School on Greencastle’s West Side is poised to sell to an Indianapolis developer.
On the recommendation of the Joint Property Committee, the commissioners voted unanimously Monday to sell Jones School, which served as the courthouse annex from 2002 through 2011, to Milestone Ventures Inc. for a price of $100,000 for the building and 3.08 acres. Milestone plans to keep the building in place and convert it into senior housing.
The county will retain one acre of property along Madison Street north of the building.
It won’t be Milestone’s first foray into the historic Greencastle school market. In 2015, the company opened Miller Asbury Apartments in the former Miller School on Anderson Street.
Milestone is also the developer and owner Millstone Pointe Apartments on the city’s south side.
The developer was the only bidder on the property, submitting a pair of proposals — $100,000 for 3.08 acres and $125,000 for the entire 4.08-acre property.
Before a vote was taken to accept either bid, Commissioner David Berry, who serves on the Joint Property Committee, also discussed demolition costs of the building, should the county choose to keep the property for the sake of building a new annex.
Demolition would cost the county $130,000. A study of the property revealed that the building contained no asbestos and a minimal amount of lead paint.
While the commissioners have agreed in principle to sell the property, the sale is contingent upon a number of hurdles Milestone needs to clear to make the process as smooth as possible. These include getting the property rezoned by the city and successfully applying for tax credits from the state.
Greencastle Mayor Bill Dory, in attendance on Monday, pointed out that Milestone has a track record of successfully obtaining such tax credits.
With the decision made on the sale, conversation turned to the county property still housed inside the building at 209 W. Liberty St. This includes records that must be stored in a locked location, as well as items for disposal, including old records to shred.
For storage, the county has discussed storage 8-by-40 foot shipping containers, to be stored on the county property southwest of Greencastle in the area of 911 Dispatch and the County Highway Garage.
Built in 1954, Mary Emma Jones School served elementary school students on the city’s West Side until 2001, when Greencastle Community School Corporation opened Deer Meadow Primary School and realigned its elementary services into two primary schools (Deer Meadow and Ridpath) for kindergarten through second grade and Tzouanakis Intermediate School for all third- through fifth-graders.
GCSC sold the building to the county for $1 in 2002 and it housed county offices until late 2011, when climbing maintenance costs forced the county to remove all office and meeting spaces from the old building.
County storage has remained in the building for the last six years, although the storage of essential records has been consolidated into the gymnasium and two other rooms due to a badly leaking roof.
In the years since the closure, the property has remained a recurring topic of discussion for commissioners and councilmen, aware of the county’s likely need for a new courthouse annex in the future.
These concerns and the possible interest of developers led to the formation of the Joint Property Committee in March of this year. Since then, the six members — Berry, county council members Darrel Thomas, Dave Fuhrman and Jill Bridgewater, Auditor Lorie Hallett and County Attorney Jim Ensley — met a number of times to explore options.