The building formerly known as West Park Elementary will soon be under new ownership, as the Ravenna Board of Education unanimously approved a resolution by a 5-0 vote to sell the building to Magnolia Realty Holdings LLC, a locally owned and licensed real estate brokerage company for $775,000 at the Board of Education meeting on Aug. 22.
“We had an open bid auction,” Superintendent Ben Ribelin told The Weekly Villager on Aug. 29. “The bids were supposed to be sealed which they were and that turns into an auction. The highest bid also had no contingencies, it is an as-is purchase which was a very good offer for us. We decided on taking that purchase price that was offered during the auction.”
The sealed bid auction ended on August 15 and as The Villager previously reported, the School District put West Park Elementary up for sale determining that it was too expensive to keep its doors open.
According to Ribelin, the District hosted seven tours from interested parties and received three sealed bids to purchase the building. The $775,000 purchase price will be used for the School District’s permanent improvement plan.
“We are not planning to go spend a bunch of money with that $775,000 as we work through our consolidation plans until we have a long-term solution,” Ribelin said. “We will use that for day-to-day clean-ups, but the goal is that we can continue to build that pot for future endeavors as well.”
The Board will reconvene to vote on a resolution to approve the transfer of property to Magnolia Reality Holdings LLC at the next meeting on Oct. 27. Ribelin added that the Board will also have to approve an official date of transfer as well.
“We are excited to be moving forward with a company that seems like it has a vested interest in the building,” he noted. “We obviously did not want it sitting idle and did not want it going to waste. We are thrilled that the company has a plan for it, and we can continue to move forward on our consolidation plans and looking forward to the future.”
Ribelin acknowledged that while the Board is not aware of what Magnolia’s specific plans are for the building, however it chooses to utilize the building must be approved by Ravenna’s City Planning Commission.
He said that Magnolia will be inheriting a building that already has 14 large rooms, a gym, a kitchen, office spaces and resides in a peaceful neighborhood.
Ribelin added that that Board will perform routine maintenance on the building as they await approval of the transfer of the property to Magnolia but any significant maintenance or improvements will be Magnolia’s responsibility.
As the Board continues to near the conclusion of the impending sale to Magnolia, one last order of business will be for the Board to hold an online auction to sell any remaining furniture left over, which should occur in the coming days.
Ribelin said that most furniture and material was already moved out of West Park by the teachers who were moved to Willyard Elementary School. Ribelin said that several teachers moved their entire classroom into their new building of employment.
“Kindergarten teachers that moved to Willyard took their entire room,” he said. “It was a calculated and methodical move coordinated by our business managers office; staging and different things got them on pallets and different boxes and moved them over to the other building that the teachers moved to.”
After a long process, Ribelin commended the Board on its handling of the entire situation.
“Treasurer Kristen Plageman has done a great job of organizing and following the Ohio Revised Code and working with our legal counsel to make sure that the postings and the auctions went smoothly,” he said. “For the Board to be forward-thinking on our buildings and spaces so that we can maintain what we have as well as move forward into the future has been a blessing for us.”
