The Columbus Municipal School District is looking to sell the shuttered Lee Middle School and the Lowndes County School District is interested in buying.
Jeff Smith, board attorney for LCSD, confirmed to The Dispatch on Wednesday that the county schools are interested in placing their centralized career-technical center at the Military Road location.
On Monday, the CMSD Board of Trustees voted to begin accepting bids for the school, which opened in 1953 and closed its doors in 2011.
Smith said he had hoped the two districts would be able to come up with an agreement on the property between each other, but that LCSD will likely bid on the 14-acre property.
“We still want it,” Smith said.
CMSD board president Angela Verdell added consideration to accept bids to purchase the old Lee Middle School building as a last minute agenda item Monday.
“I wanted to be sure to add this item to the agenda tonight, because in the past few weeks we’ve had interest in this facility,” Verdell said. “Right now we have two really serious interests. So I wanted to know if it’s the board’s pleasure to put it out for bids.”
Verdell did not specify who the interested parties are.
Trustee Currie Fisher motioned to advertise for bids in a local newspaper. She was seconded by Glenn Lautzenhiser. The motion passed unanimously. Bid advertisements will run next week in local newspapers. Board attorney David Dunn did not respond to calls from The Dispatch seeking the final date of bid submissions by press time.
LCSD has been searching for a spot to locate its new career-technical center since the passage of a $44 million bond issue May 12.
The county board has explored several land options for a centralized building. In July, two sites were being considered by LCSD: a 12.5-acre parcel T.E. Lott owns behind Lowndes Funeral Home and a 17.2 acre property belonging to S.L. Sethi on the west side of Highway 12, about 1,000 feet north of Highway 50.
Joey Henderson, the architect LCSD is using to construct the votech, has asked the county school board to have a site selected by the end of August.
The LCSD board has approved $800,000 to buy the land, which must be at least 12 acres.
Lee was last used as a middle school in January 2011. It is 96,350 square foot property situated on 14.4 acres of land.
Smith, who represents the Lee School area in Columbus in the state Legislature, said it is time to have the old building torn down.
Lee was put up for bids in 2011 by CMSD, but they did not sell to the lone bidder, Point of Grace Church. CMSD rejected the initial bid of $175,000 and later rejected a second bid due to additional contingencies the church wanted to add to the agreement.
LCSD plans to allot $11 million of the $44 million bond issue to the construction of the career-technical center, which would service students from all three Lowndes County high schools.
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