Highlands gets no offers for Fawn school property

Highlands School District didn’t get any offers to buy the district’s former elementary school in Fawn.

School board President Debbie Beale said the district will try again to find a buyer for the 15-acre property at 5591 Ridge Road.

In the meantime, the building could be used for storage, Beale said. It most recently had been used as the district’s support center after a reorganization.

The district accepted bids for the property until July 29. It required a $500,000 minimum bid.

The school board voted in May to permanently close the building at the end of the 2018-19 school year.

Fawn supervisors sent a letter to the district in late July noting that the property is zoned for residential use only and that its existing sewage system is noncompliant.

There is no public sewage service in that area and the school is serviced by a holding tank, township Supervisor David Montanari said.

Montanari said township officials were concerned that the district’s bid form asking if a buyer would use the property for residential, commercial or industrial purposes could be “very misleading.”

“There was a special exception made to accommodate the school,” he said. “The last thing we wanted was to get into a legal dispute with an intended buyer, if there was one.”

Montanari said he hopes the district will secure and maintain the building and grounds to prevent the property from becoming an “attractive nuisance.”

“An empty building is never a good situation,” he said. “It was a big part of our community. If the township had their way, we would see it remain as a school — but we don’t have a dog in that fight.”