‘Very unsafe’: Lander School Board approves request for state funding to demolish old North Elementary building

(Lander, WY) – The Lander School Board gave the Wyoming School Facilities Commission the go-ahead this month to request state funding to demolish the old North Elementary building.

The facility is “very unsafe,” Lander Schools Business Manager Travis Sweeney said during a board meeting last week, recalling that state officials who have toured the building in years past “couldn’t believe that it was still in existence.”

More recently, Sweeney said, Lander Schools hosted a Wyoming School Facilities Commission meeting this fall that included a tour of several district facilities, and during that tour, Lander’s new project manager from the state School Facilities Department asked to see the old North building.

“He was curious to see (it),” Sweeney said. “He had heard stories about it. 

“So he went and visited that facility, and he was amazed – that we still have it, for one, and two, that we currently have students in (it).”

Now, Sweeney said the new project manager is “all gung-ho to try and get funds from the Legislature to seek to get this building demolished and taken care of.”

“It’s not a guarantee yet, but I think our project manager and the director of school facilities – who’s a local to this community – (are) pretty much on board to try and get this done,” he said.

The state School Facilities Department conducted a “Most Cost Effective Remedy” study that recommended demolishing the facility years ago, he noted.

“We had engineers and architects put a plan together, and their recommendation at that time was it would be better to demolish it … instead of continuing to sink major maintenance dollars into it,” Sweeney explained.

That MCER study “still stands,” Superintendent Mike Harris said, agreeing that any attempt at “retrofitting” North “would be way more expensive (and) take more time” than demolition.

If the North building is demolished, Sweeney said Lander Schools will still maintain ownership of the property, because “in the event that we’d ever need another new school building, that would be a prime location for it.”

Currently, there isn’t a need for additional student space in Fremont County School District 1, Harris said, so “we should be OK” without the North facility – but “there are some things that we’re using the property for now that we have to reconsider.”

For example, Harris said FCSD 1 stores a lot of unused equipment at the facility, and those items will have to be relocated or disposed of as “part of the process” of demolishing North.

The local Head Start program currently rents space in the building too, Sweeney said, so “if we move forward with this, we’ll have to begin those discussions with that (organization) right away, just to give them ample time – because this could be a multi-year process before we actually see the money.”

For more information, contact FCSD 1 at (307) 332-4711.