DANVILLE — The Danville Board of Education is considering the possibility of building a new gymnasium on land the district purchased last month.
The board purchased 411 Market Street for $144,600 in November. The property is adjacent to the high school and is “one property down from the [new] parking area created,” Danville Superintendent Jason Snively said.
“We want to try to preserve that (lot) there for potential expansion,” Snively said. “Right now, that expansion would be more of an athletic facility, instructional facility or physical education facility.”
The district doesn’t have a timeline for when this project would get off the ground, but Snively said the facility would most likely be used for basketball and wrestling events.
“Right now we’re a little challenged with having space for wrestling,” Snively said. “The athletic boosters have their facility downtown that we’re using for our wrestlers, which is not convenient, not the most conducive for what they need.”
Additionally, the superintendent stated that the district doesn’t have any school funds for this project and wouldn’t be asking taxpayers to contribute via a capital improvement levy in the near future.
Rather, Snively said athletic boosters would mainly fund the project, citing the recent success of Tough Street Stadium‘s construction.
“There is a vision, and this is strictly a vision. We don’t have plans drawn up. We don’t have anything for a [new] gymnasium,” Snively said.
“Our old gymnasium has been kept well; it’s a nice gymnasium, but there’s no training room,” he added. “The locker rooms are all down a flight of stairs in the basement, and there’s no ventilation in that area. It’s just not conducive to getting our players where they need to be.”
Snively added that the current gymnasium, originally built in the “late ’60s early ’70s,” has limited storage space, adding that they “just shove everything into a couple of closets.”
Previous owner paid for demolition of 411 Market Street house
Before the district purchased 411 Market Street, Snively said, a “blighted” rental house in need of lots of improvement stood on the lot.
Snively added that the property first came up for sale a couple of years ago, but the district wasn’t ready to make the move just yet.
However, with the new parking lot in place, where the old Danville Intermediate building used to be, the timing made sense.
When the district pulled the trigger on the purchase, tenants did not live in the space, and as part of the sale, the district had the house demolished.
“When we purchased it, we actually purchased the lot. The owner at the time agreed to tear the place down,” Snively said. “We just purchased the lot, and that took all the liabilities off of us for the property.”
Even though the property purchase moves the district towards its plans, there is another obstacle.
“The one thing that will be a barrier moving forward is that there’s another property in between the [411 Market Street] lot and the parking lot that we created,” Snively said.
“So, we would have to acquire the other lot in between, because the one lot that we purchased is not big enough for the gymnasium itself.”
Since the vision for the new gymnasium is barely formed and the other needed property is not up for sale at the moment, Snively said the district is not looking to move forward on the other property yet.