Batavia schools moving maintenance shop
The Batavia school district will go ahead with a plan to move its maintenance facility off the grounds of Batavia High School.
The school board Tuesday voted to rent-to-own an industrial building at 804 Main St. as the new maintenance headquarters.
The district will pay $144,000 rent a year for 10 years, and has an option to buy the building for $10 at the end of the lease.
The building belongs to VandeVenter Manufacturing, also known as Vandee Manufacturing. The company's co-owner, Ron Link, is a former 12-year member of the Batavia school board, having stepped down in 2013. He said the district approached him about obtaining the building, one of two VandeVenter owns.
The move-in date has not been determined, said Kris Monn, the district's assistant superintendent for finance. The district estimates it will spend $1.66 million to remodel the 56-year-old building. It plans to put a welding shop in it, install lifts capable of raising large vehicles, and to install humidity controls that would enable the building to store large quantities of paper.
According to its 2013 property tax bill, the site has a fair cash value of $736,410.
The district's current maintenance facility could be torn down to make way for parking and a small three-bay garage, under a plan for revamping athletics fields at the high school. The maintenance building, a pole barn, was built in 1968 to house school buses.
District officials said it needed about $135,000 worth of work to bring it up to current school health-life safety building code standards.