OOLITIC – The Town of Oolitic and Indiana Landmarks from Jeffersonville, Indiana are working together to conduct an engineering study on the North Oolitic School building.
Tim Stark is the owner of the building, however, Jon Broglin Oolitic Town Council member is acting on the behalf of Stark to apply for a grant in the amount of $3,000 for the study from Indiana Landmarks.
Indiana Landmarks will contribute $2,500 and the Town of Oolitic will contribute $500 if the grant is approved. A meeting will take place in July to approve the grant.
This will pay for the structural assessment of the building. A study was performed previously in 2007 on the building with three proposals deriving from that study.
Hoosier Uplands was interested at that time to use the building to construct 16 apartments. Hoosier Uplands paid for the previous assessment of the building which included layout, floors, apartments, and elevators.
The 2007 assessment was received and the proposal considered at that time costs had, ranged from $4.5 million to $3 million.
Due to a comedy of errors the sale of that building fell threw, according to Broglin in describing the previous situation.
The engineering firm Lawson, Indianapolis, Indiana conducted the 2007 assessment for $3,000 and can complete a thorough update on the previous assessment, rather than performing another complete engineering study.
Broglin believes the town will be approved for the grant.
At this point, the town wants to know how much it will cost to just weatherproof the building. The next steps would be to see whether anyone is interested in purchasing the building, locating contractors to complete the rehab of the building, and to see if the town would qualify for grants into turning the structure into an apartment building.
There has been some interest already expressed in the building, according to Broglin.
