By JAN LARSON McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
Bowling Green’s economic development could get a needed boost by the building of a new elementary, according to city officials.
So the city’s Board of Public Utilities has joined Bowling Green City Council’s efforts to ease traffic congestion if a new elementary school is built north of Bowling Green Middle School.
The utilities board voted last week to donate its share – three acres – of the nine acres being transferred over to the school district if the bond issue passes this fall.
Bowling Green Public Utilities Director Brian O’Connell talked to the board about the importance of the school bond issue passing so a new elementary can be built.
“It’s important to attract people to town,” O’Connell said.
New schools help do that by attracting business to Bowling Green, he said. In the past, industries looking to locate in communities expected the cities to grow with them. Now they expect the community to have a workforce in place and ready to fill positions, O’Connell said.
“Companies are looking for employees to be there before they get there,” he said. “That’s a different model than we’ve seen in the past.”
Bowling Green City Council will have the second reading of an ordinance Monday evening that would result in an additional six acres being transferred to the school district – for the total of nine acres.
The land would be given at no cost to the school district.
“We both agreed taxpayers paid for this already” when the city purchased the land years ago, O’Connell said.
The city currently rents out the acreage for farming, generating less than $500 a year for the total acreage.
Mike Frost, president of the Board of Public Utilities, agreed with the plan to transfer the land.
“It’s absolutely something we need to do,” Frost said during last week’s meeting. “It’s wonderful to donate that to the school district.”
City Council President Mike Aspacher thanked the utilities board for its willingness to donate the acreage, saying it was “critical” for securing access to the proposed school building.
The land, located northwest of the existing middle and high schools, would ease traffic at the proposed elementary school off Fairview Avenue.
There are two parcels that may be transferred:
- Nearly six acres (shaded in pink on map) that were part of a land acquisition by the city in 1993, presumably for economic development purposes. That acreage sits just east of the Ashbury Hills housing development, and has a strip about 60 feet wide that stretches north to Van Camp Road, just east of the Wood County Humane Society.
- Three acres (shaded in yellow on map) purchased by the city’s Board of Public Utilities in 2002, just to the east of the other city parcel. This land was bought in connection with a study and proposal on the Toussaint Creek Story Water Detention Basin. The board did not pursue the project, and the acreage has been rented out for farming since then.
The acreage can be used for parking and to improve traffic flow in the area, by giving additional access from Van Camp Road. The proposed elementary would already have access from Fairview Avenue.
Currently, the high school parking lot is accessed from West Poe Road, and the middle school from Fairview Avenue. The proposed elementary school acreage also has access to Fairview – but additional access to Van Camp would be helpful, Superintendent Francis Scruci said – especially since approximately 90 percent of Bowling Green students are dropped off at school by buses, daycare transportation, or parents’ vehicles.
If the bond issue for the new elementary school is approved by voters on the November ballot, the school district will have a traffic study conducted to see if a turn lane, similar to the lane at the middle school, is warranted on Fairview for the elementary.
