Franklin Community Schools is planning to turn the former Earlywood building into a preschool. Daily Journal File Photo
Progress has been made, but there are a few more hoops to jump through before the former Earlywood school can be redeveloped.
Franklin Community School Corp. is planning to turn the former Earlywood building into a preschool following the closure of the long-time service center earlier this year. Earlywood’s governing board voted unanimously to dissolve the service center in March 2023, citing concerns about maintenance issues that stem from the building’s architecture, and it closed at the end of June.
The Franklin school board approved an appropriation in July to purchase and demolish the building for $700,000. The purchase of the school will cost $345,095 and the demolition was quoted at $281,500. The board opted to approve the amount above the quoted amount in case demolition costs are higher than expected, school officials said at the time.
As part of the agreement to take over the building, the school district is set to assume business responsibilities such as record-keeping and issuing tax statements. But officials are having trouble finding some of the records.
Although the property was purchased by the district in July, FCS does not have the deed. During the process, district officials also discovered that the property had been zoned industrial. When Earlywood was first built 27 years ago the property was zoned institutional, the zoning classification for school or government buildings.
To continue with the project, the property needs to be reverted to its original zoning, said Roger Young, an attorney for the school district. The school board approved authorization to initiate a rezoning process for the Earlywood property at last week’s board meeting.
Nobody knows why or when the property became zoned as industrial, Young said.
“The city of Franklin planning department cannot fathom that property was rezoned industrial,” Young said.
Whatever the reason for the change, the property needs to be rezoned institutional before it is redeveloped. Young plans to get the petition to rezone filed by Oct. 10 for consideration later this year. The hope is to get it on the Franklin Plan Commission agenda later this year and have the rezoning come before the city council in January, he said.
There are also problems with obtaining the deed to the property that are still yet to be worked out, he said.
Demolition can proceed despite the zoning issue. However, the property has to be rezoned before another school can be built because the non-conforming use of institutional zoning is tied specifically to the building rather than the property, Young said.
“In other words, if a school building were to remain there, that would be considered a legal non-conforming use under industrial zoning,” Young said. “It was legal when it was built so it could continue. Once you tear it down, you lose the legal non-conforming use status. You’re back to a fair piece of ground to which the current zoning then applies.”
District officials have met with Casey-Bertram Construction to talk about a timeline for the project. They are currently working on scheduling cut-offs for the utilities, but that could take up to a month to get done, said Benji Betts, executive director of operations for Franklin.
They are also starting scheduling for demolition, which may not start for “quite a while,” Betts said. Potentially, demolition could begin in October. Demolition will take approximately four months once it starts, he said.
Once the utilities are off, the Franklin Fire Department will use the empty building for smoke drills, Betts said. They’ll use a machine to fill the building with smoke and complete training exercises to navigate the building and more.
“One of the bonuses of tearing down a building [is] you get to help others out,” Betts said at the school board meeting.
The hope is to begin construction in March 2025 and have the preschool ready to open in Aug. 2026.
