School buildings eventually age out, creating, many times, the sad situation where memories of going to class are suddenly attached to a vacant building or no building at all.
Think of Southeast Middle School, where former students in Pine Bluff’s once-segregated school district pleaded with the city, without success, to leave a vestige of the school intact so that former students could always remember their days there.
The aging process for schools in Pine Bluff has had its own catalyst, that being a dramatic loss in population over the years. As people have left the city by the thousands, they took their kids with them, leaving gaping holes in the area school districts — Pine Bluff, Dollarway and Watson Chapel — to the point that Dollarway and Pine Bluff are now one district and Watson Chapel is always looking over its shoulder at potential doom as enrollment drops.
It was not surprising then that the Pine Bluff district has announced that it is going to sell some of its unused properties. The only surprise, perhaps, was that it took the district quite a while to make the move.
Independent reporting for Pine Bluff & Jefferson County since 1879.
Now up for sale will be the Oak Park School, which still looks modern even as the weeds grow up around it; the Indiana Street School; and the downtown district office.
We understand that the district has a keen interest in not selling something that it might need in the future, so there is no need to rush into these things. But in holding on to an unused property, the utility of that property, just by its condition of being idle, diminishes over time. The roof leaks, a homeless person breaks in and takes up residence, a fire starts. Things — usually bad things — are always happening to vacant properties.
But released to the public or to a public entity, these properties may enjoy a revival.
Look at what happened to the First Ward School, an old elementary school on East Sixth Avenue. Mayor Shirley Washington scooped that up from the school district for a few thousand dollars with the plan to turn it into a homeless shelter. The building, she said, had good bones. And while it’s not operating as planned just yet, the goal is still there for it to serve the underserved in a big way.
The wheels of business and commerce move slowly in Pine Bluff, but they do occasionally move. Perhaps these other structures have a sturdiness that will play into someone else’s dream of doing something grand for the city. Now that they are being sold, we can all hope for that future.