Press Release, July 14, 2010 re sale of Hostetter Building

BURNT HILLS: At their meeting on July 13, members of the Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake Board of Education took the first formal step toward resolving what has been a long-standing question in the school district: what to do with the former Glenhaven elementary school, now known as the Hostetter Building, at 50 Cypress Drive, Glenville.

Board members approved a resolution stating that the building is no longer usable for pupil instruction, and the district therefore intends to sell it.

Under state law, the school board can sell real estate that is no longer useful for educational purposes without voter approval. A voter who objects to this has 30 days to file a petition signed by 10 percent of the qualified voters of the district.

"I suspect most residents will be pleased we are finally moving forward with this decision," says superintendent Jim Schultz. "People ask me 'When are you guys going to stop investing money in that old building?' especially since it was flooded in 2008."

On November 4, 2008, custodians arrived at the Hostetter Building to find water gushing out of its front doors. An overnight break in the underground water main had flooded most of the single-story building. Water in the main was under so much pressure that it spread for hundreds of yards, flooding hallways, offices, classrooms and storage areas in most of the structure.

As a result, all rent-paying tenants of the building had to move out, and most district office staff were temporarily relocated to the high school, middle school, or construction trailers brought in to hold them. The trailers remained at Hostetter for over a year while an insurance claim was being settled.

BH-BL ultimately received an insurance settlement of $1.2 million for damage incurred in the flood. Approximately $400,000 of this was spent on flood-related costs, and the Board of Education set aside $800,000 in a special reserve fund dedicated to resolving the long-term issue of where to relocate the district offices.

What happens next?

Schultz and the Board of Education plan to use the next 30 days to interview and select a realty firm that can help the district earn the most for the Hostetter Building and its 38.8 acres of land. "We have no idea if the property will take three months or three years to sell in the current economy," he says. "We're looking for a firm that knows how to maximize the land's potential value and market it for us."

Should the property sell quickly, Schultz is confident that district office staff could be temporarily moved into other spaces as they were following the flood, but says that a permanent answer to the question of where to put the district offices will take a couple years to implement.

"The point now -- and the board agrees -- is that we have to start the process," he says. "You never have all the answers, and you never have a crystal ball to know exactly what the future holds for enrollment. But we do know it no longer makes economic sense to hold onto an aging, damaged building in the southwestern corner of the district when clearly most housing growth and development will continue to focus on the northern half of our district in Saratoga County."

Selling the Hostetter property will have the additional advantage to BH-BL taxpayers of adding it to the tax rolls.

History of the building reflects enrollment trends

The Hostetter Building sits on a parcel of 38.8 acres of land at the very end of Cypress Drive in Schenectady County. It was built as the district's fourth elementary school in 1957-58, when the Capital Region was experiencing dramatic enrollment growth due to the post World War II baby boom.

During the 1960s BH-BL built additions onto all four elementary schools and both of its secondary schools as it struggled to keep up with the baby boom and new housing developments.

By 1980 enrollment had declined just as dramatically, and a fourth elementary school was no longer needed. In the fall of 1981, the district converted Glenhaven from an elementary school to a home for its district offices and several tenants.

Since 1985, BH-BL enrollment has remained remarkably steady, hovering between 3,300 and 3,500 total students annually during that 25-year period. "Several times during this period we appeared to be on the verge of needing more elementary classrooms, and the question of possibly reopening Hostetter would be studied all over again," says Schultz. "But then the economy would decline or the expected housing boom did not materialize."

When former superintendent Bill Hostetter retired in 2004, the Board of Education honored him by formally renaming the building the "Hostetter Leadership and Administration Building."

An ongoing challenge for Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake has been that, without children in a building, repairs and renovations to it are not eligible for state building aid. Since local taxpayers had to pay 100 percent of the costs of work done at Hostetter (rather than the 25 percent share paid for renovations at active schools), only minimal maintenance has been done since 1981.

"Only one wing has a boiler from 1990," notes Schultz. "The rest are still using the original boilers from 1958, and most of the facility is seriously dilapidated. We have frequent leaks, and could incur major costs if a boiler dies. This is no longer an investment we want to hold for the future of our instructional program."

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