Dec. 16--PRINCE GEORGE -- When the old Carson School was vacated in 2003, the community called it the end of an era, according to speeches and documents provided to a team of architects.
A Dec. 10 decision by the Board of Supervisors marked the end of another era. A decade after the building fell silent and 60 years after the last graduating class passed through its halls, supervisors advanced plans to demolish the old school to make way for a new fire station and community space.
Supervisors directed staff to send out a request for proposals for the demolition, which is expected to cost a maximum of $125,000. The county has projected the entire project to cost $2.9 million.
Art and Architecture president Rick Haynie presented county leaders with three options for the vacated property on Tuesday. One of the options saved Carson School and built a fire station for the Carson Fire Department next to it. The second option preserved the front of the school and built a fire station through it; the third demolished the school and constructed a new fire station.
Supervisors chose the third option.
Haynie said it would have cost more to renovate the building. But historic tax credits the school would have received with renovation offset any real difference in cost between the three plans, he added.
"I think you would get more value out of the green [demolition] plan," Haynie told the board.
He later said the school would not lend itself to becoming a fire station easily.
The additional work that came with the tax credits did not convince some supervisors that renovation was the best way to stretch the taxpayers' dollar.
"The things that it is going to take to do a renovation is going to take away from maybe better showers, additional sleeping quarters because it is being spent on ... everything required to meet the historic things," Chairman William Robertson said. "I think the more reasonable way to go is just to put the value into the fire department and not into saving a historic building, if you can call it historic."
Supervisor Alan Carmichael added that after speaking with members of the community, he believed they would support of the plan that calls for the demolition.
Now the school where four generations of some families graduated and even some of the county leaders remember attending will become the site of a new Carson fire station.
Haynie will continue to finalize the design as the bid documents are sent out. He said the new site will include five bays, sleeping quarters for male and female firefighters, apparatus rooms and exercise rooms. The architect said that the old library, which was at one point the original Carson fire station, may remain.
The sleeping quarters will make it possible for the firefighters to set aside days to spend at the station, Director of Fire and EMS Brad Owens said. The extra space of a new station will accommodate larger equipment.
Supervisor William Gandel expressed support for a day that the community could come and salvage memorabilia from the site before it is demolished.
"The community does love the building. We would try to incorporate as much as the feelings of the school in this new building," Haynie said.
A previous attempt by the county to demolish the school was defrayed by the community.
- Vanessa Remmers may be reached at 804-722-5155 or [email protected].
Copyright 2013 - The Progress-Index, Petersburg, Va.
