EUREKA SPRINGS — EUREKA SPRINGS - Mayor Morris Pate wants to move city offices from Eureka Springs’ historic downtown courthouse to its historic high school on U.S. 62.
If the city could buy the 62-year-old Eureka Springs High School building, then it would no longer have to rent the first floor of the Carroll County courthouse, Pate said. The school district is no longer using the high school building after opening a new high school in January.
If the city moved its offices, that would free up parking spaces for people who want to shop or dine downtown, Pate said. The city also would have plenty of extra room in the former high school building that it could use or lease.
City offices are in a 2,000-square-foot space now, Pate said. The old high school is24,096 square feet, not including the gymnasium and outbuildings.
Pate said the City Advertising and Promotion Commission could also be housed in the high school building. The commission leases space in another building in town.
The mayor made the comments Tuesday during a meeting held to get public input on the fate of the seven-acre high schoolcampus.
Pate said he would feel more comfortable if the city owned its own building.
“That would get us out of downtown in a borrowed courthouse,” Pate told a crowd of about 60 who gathered at the convention center of the Best Western Inn of the Ozarks.
The Eureka Springs School District has been asking $1 million for the property, said Superintendent Curtis Turner. So far, there have been no buyers.
Pate said he asked the school district to donate the old high school building to the city.
“I don’t think that went over well,” he told the crowd.
Al Larson, president of the School Board, said it was his fiduciary duty to get money for the old high school campus.
“We can’t simply give the thing away,” he told the crowd. “It’s always going to be a valuable piece of property.”
But there are problems with the old building.
During a presentation at the beginning of the meeting, Ed Levy, a principal with Cromwell Architects Engineers in Little Rock, said an engineering study should be done to determine the cost of making the building useful. It has asbestos in the floor tiles and possibly in the ceiling, he said. Also, the roof leaks.
Pate said he’d like to see the results of such a study.
“Granted this buildingup here has a bad roof and may leak a little,” Pate told the crowd. “But that’s better than having a creek running underneath your office. Sometimes it has a bad smell to it.”
Pate was referring to East Leatherwood Creek, which runs underneath several buildings in Eureka Springs, including the courthouse, which was built in 1908.
The old high school campus is so large that it could serve as city offices and a community center, Pate said. The gymnasium is “in great shape” and could be used by the community, he said.
Others in the crowd offered a wide variety of options for the old high school building, including tearing it down and building a swimming pool or converting theexisting building into an arts center or trade school.
Levy and Mark Peterson, a professor of community and economic development with the University of Arkansas’ Division of Agriculture in Little Rock, met with school officials Tuesday morning and devised a list of 19 possibilities, but the financial feasibility of all those possibilities has yet to be examined. They work through the division’s Breakthrough Solutions strategic planning program to help cities with such issues.
Some in the crowd debated whether the space should be used for tourism or strictly for the community.
“I hear people say, ‘Every time we do something, we are doing it for the tourists,’” Alderman Mickey Schneidersaid. “Why aren’t we doing this for the community?”
Frank Egan said the idea of something for the community is fine, but it needs to generate revenue. A community center with art, music and food would attract tourists and locals alike, he said.
Karen Gros, a member of the School Board, said she “prefers something for the community instead of just for the tourists.”
In Eureka Springs, buildings more than 50 years old are considered historic and fall under certain guidelines from the city’s Historic District Commission.
The high school building was designed by T. Ewing Shelton of Fayetteville in 1951. Ewing also designed Asbell and Root elementary schools in Fayetteville.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 02/13/2013