Prior to the Augusta Commission embracing the idea of selling off idle properties, the Richmond County School System changed its rules regarding what to do with similar properties under their care.
Just as with the city of Augusta’s change of heart, it took a hole in the county’s wallet for the school board to take notice that allowing once state-of-the-art, now historic buildings to rot underfoot rather than be given a new life, resulted only in massive demolition/chemical abatement bills, but public scorn as well.
According to Jeff Baker, program manager for the school system, the common practice in school building is to demolish the existing obsolete building and build a new school on top of the original footprint. However, growth also means looking at factors like parking lot sizes and traffic flow, and sometimes that factor alone can determine if the site has outgrown the original footprint.
According to the Director of Media and Public Relations Haley Lacuesta, the school board decided to offer up three new properties to the public and place them on sale.
Those properties can be found at the school system’s website.
“August 12, the Board voted to designate the properties on that list as surplus that is open (sic) for sale. Our maintenance team is now handling the listing of the properties,” Lacuesta said by email.
The school board chose to handle the sales in-house rather than flipping the land over to the Department of Housing and Community Development or the Augusta Land Bank, which is common between public agencies. According to a system employee who wished not to go on the records, the board wanted to avoid an entanglement which, according to other unnamed sources, has now become the prime focus of the current investigation.
The local FBI office has confirmed an investigation is underway and many employees say that the offices visited by federal agents and the labeled boxes carried out of the building came from from former director Hawthorne Welcher’s files located in his office. Welsher resigned in May of last year after months of being on paid “administrative leave” while an audit was hastily convened.
Both agencies, AHCD and the Land Bank have come under scrutiny recently for questionable land deals, such as the Weed School and the mysterious disappearance of $6 million of federal funds, which ironically were funds that were earmarked for rental assistance during the Covid pandemic.
Pictured on the school system’s website, the buildings look to have been well maintained and nothing in the architecture appears to be dated, but rather, have an interesting “retro” look that remains in vogue.
According to the system’s website, two former elementary schools, Terrace Manor and Windsor Spring Elementary, are on the list as well as a mostly vacant lot with maintenance buildings on site located on Mike Padgett Hwy.
Board members are hoping the two decommissioned schools can be repurposed as loft apartments or commercial office space and, at three acres, the Mike Padgett Highway. site might make for a fast food restaurant in South Augusta.
The school board seems to have learned a lesson with the controversy surrounding the old John Davidson High School building from any years back. In the late 1990s, the historic art deco building was, under the administration of Charles Larke, allowed to deteriorate to the point that it could not be saved.
Scott Hudson is the Senior Investigative Reporter, editorialist and weekly columnist for The Augusta Press. Reach him at scott@theaugustapress.com
