PIERCE CITY, Mo. —
A Pierce City school building that dates to the early 1920s has again landed on a list of endangered historic structures compiled by a nonprofit organization.
For the second straight year, Pierce City Middle School at 300 Myrtle St. is on a list of the state’s most endangered historic places compiled by the Missouri Alliance for Historic Preservation, which promotes the preservation of historic places. The building, constructed in 1921, was nominated for the list by Historic Pierce City, a local preservation group, according to Bill Hart, a field representative for the state alliance.
Demolition plan
The building has been included on the list because of the Pierce City School District’s plans to demolish it, Hart said.
“It’s not really in that bad of shape,” he said of the building.
Russ Moreland, school superintendent, said a master plan for the district’s buildings, endorsed by the school board two years ago, calls for demolishing school building once a new school is constructed. The district in April unsuccessfully sought a bond issue to build such a new school.
“It’s not that the district doesn’t recognize the significance of the building,” Moreland said Tuesday.
The district initially explored renovating the building, Moreland said, but engineers and an architect enlisted to devise the master plan said it would be more feasible to construct a new school.
Moreland acknowledged that those architectural and engineering reviews were not in-depth, and that no written cost estimates for renovating the building were put forth. He said some estimates were orally suggested more than two years ago, but he could not recall them Tuesday.
Moreland said school officials also have concerns about renovating the almost 90-year-old structure, which he said “wasn’t built with today’s educational needs in mind.”
Accessibility
The building is not accessible for students who have disabilities, Moreland said. The district has to rely on window air conditioning units to cool it.
Additionally, school officials would have the problem of where to house the middle-school students while the district renovated the building, he said. The middle school usually has between 165 and 170 students, and they would have to be relocated to 10 to 11 trailers for the 12 to 18 months it would take to complete the renovations, he said.
Moreland also said demolishing the building would create space that the district needs, for future buildings or for parking, on property it already owns. The current school buildings are located close to one another, and demolition would allow the district to address building needs on land that it already has.
A phone message left Tuesday for Betty Bierkortte, the registered agent of Historic Pierce City, was not returned.
Hart, who addressed the Pierce City School Board in December, said he thinks the district has never done a thorough study of what a renovation would entail and cost in contrast with what would be required for a new structure.
“I don’t think they really looked closely enough at the cost savings for (that) building,” he said. He said the state alliance has offered to help the district write an application for a grant to fund such a study.
Hart also said the middle-school building is a rarity in Pierce City now since many historic structures were destroyed in the May 2003 tornado. It would be a “crying shame” to lose it to demolition, he said.
Meanwhile, the school board has not decided whether or when to pose the ballot issue to voters again.
“Honestly, I’m not sure when the board will put that back on the ballot again,” Moreland said.
April election
A proposed $3.9 million bond issue to build a new middle school and a new vocational agriculture building received 554 votes in favor to 528 opposed during the April election. The measure needed a 57.1 percent majority for passage; it received about 51 percent approval.
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Pierce City school again on endangered list
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