Old school now too old
By Charles Batchelor
Offices for school staff in Bon Air moving to former Ukrop's headquarters in Southlake

The Bon Air Elementary School was built in 1924 and provides offices for about 70 school system employees. It is "not physically or fiscally prudent to renovate."

"It should be demolished," was Tom Doland's recommendation for the building now housing the school system's Instruction Division Center, better known as the old Bon Air Elementary School.

Visitors to the building on McRae Road are greeted with a musty smell, peeling paint, wires hanging from light fixtures and the sound of old window air conditioners grinding to keep the old school comfortable. Suggesting that the old building has "charm" was greeted with disbelief from the staff. The brick building was last renovated in 1956.

Doland, the Matoaca district school board member, was once on the school's staff and had an office in the building for several years. At the school board meeting last week, Doland made it clear that new offices for the instructional support staff were long overdue.

The question before the school board, however, was not to renovate, but where to move.

Ukrop's corporate headquarters moved to Henrico County in February, making available this 25,672 square feet of office space on Southlake Boulevard (just off Midlothian Turnpike). The school system will pay $2.4 million for a five-year lease.

While Dr. James Schroeder, the Midlothian district school board member, pushed for renting office space for ten years at Beaufont Mall on Midlothian Turnpike across from Cloverleaf Mall, Doland, Marshall Trammell and Dianne Pettitt preferred a five-year lease on the old Ukrop's corporate headquarters on Southlake Boulevard.

The lease on the 25,672 square feet of office space (with an additional 13,060 square feet of warehouse space elsewhere) was estimated to total about $2.4 million.

The case for one office building over the other mostly turned on when the school system should build its own office building for its administrative staff.

Schroeder said leasing was a better use of cash flow in the short and middle term, while the other board members preferred to take a longer view, building in the next five to 10 years.

"We keep putting it off, and it's never popular to build something other than schools," explained Trammell.

"We need to take care of our employees," said Pettitt.

Doland argued there were also administrative benefits in gathering the school staff in the same location, instead of keeping them spread out across the county.