Collegiate Times

The future of prime real estate has always been a hot topic, but few downtown spots have received as much attention in recent years as the old Blacksburg Middle School site.

Gary Creed, chairman of the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors, confirmed yesterday that negotiations are underway for a contract in which an unnamed landholder will furnish the property for a new football stadium.

And now that the county had a deal underway that might give young Blacksburg athletes a field for practice, one of the few remaining roadblocks preventing the sale of the 20-acre site on Main Street might soon give way.

The future of the old Blacksburg Middle School depends on a set of relationships involving three government agencies: the Montgomery County School Board, the Montgomery County Board of Supervisors and the Town of Blacksburg.

?The school board is in charge of all of its property until it decides to dispose of it, and then it turns it over to the board of supervisors, but it hasn?t done that yet,? said Paul Lancaster, one member of the Blacksburg Town Council. ?Basically we?re waiting to see what the county is going to be doing, whether school board or Board of Supervisors or somebody up there. It?s up to them as far as the next step.?

This next step involves completing at least two goals. Creed said the school board must not only find a field for the Blacksburg Bruins to use for football and soccer games but also ensure that the old school is not needed for academic purposes. Currently, the new Blacksburg Middle School on Price?s Fork Road offers public schooling for 6th, 7th and 8th graders in the area.

Although estimates about the price tag for the site have been circulating, Lancaster said the town has yet to see ?an objective appraisal of what the property is worth.?

Several groups have been vying for the downtown spot since the middle school shut down three years ago. The Collegiate Times reported last November that Branwick Associates, a Virginia Beach-based development firm, had proposed to build a giant shopping mall on the grounds, but the company has made little if any headway with its proposal since that time.

?We have not heard back from town or county or school board officials about the proposal, and I have communicated this to Mayor (Roger) Hedgepeth,? said Bob Smithwick, president of Branwick Associates.

Although there are no final cost estimates on the proposed shopping mall, Smithwick said the price tag might be ?in excess of $300 million.?

But putting a shopping complex on the site would require rezoning, which the town controls.

?We already have the property zoned for residential, so (the county) can?t just throw a shopping mall on it or anything like that,? Lancaster said.

Others have brought less business-oriented proposals to the table.

?We would like to consider using that building for community work, moving our thrift shop there and all of our open university classes there and then renting out the rest of the building for other community groups,? said Gail Billingsley, director of the YMCA at Virginia Tech.

Because the original letter of interest that the YMCA sent to the Montgomery County School Board did not yield any results, the community organization has moved forward with other plans.

?Space needs though are a bit more pressing than the sale of that building has been moving, so we are proceeding ? actually we have a verbal contract in on another building right now,? Billingsley said. ?If, however, the town decides they would like to keep the old Blacksburg Middle School building in community service, we?ve expressed the fact that we would be very happy to work with anybody who takes over that site.?