Pine Tree Center sold to Orion Township

The Lake Orion Faculty Board permitted the sale of the Pine Tree Heart to Orion Township at their Dec. 16 assembly.

Assistant Superintendent of Enterprise and Finance Andrea Curtis stated the 55,800-square-foot constructing, positioned on 11.4 acres at 590 Pine Tree Highway, bought for $200,000.

Orion Township officers unanimously permitted the acquisition settlement on a 7-0 vote on the Dec. 15 assembly. The temper on the Lake Orion college board was the identical.

In February, a number of neighborhood members requested the college board to rethink ending applications on the middle, which closed within the fall.

The district offered a number of applications on the middle, previously an elementary college that was repurposed to turn out to be a particular schooling middle in an settlement with the Oakland Colleges eight years in the past.

Curtis instructed the board the explanation behind the sale.

“Since 2017, growth prices have nearly tripled and when contemplating the zoning for the location, the scale and form of the property and reviewing brownfield and different incentives, sale to the council for the aim of making a public park was thought-about greatest for the district, council and neighborhood,” Curtis stated. “The valuation of the vacant land got here to $600,000 and it was due to this fact decided that the sale worth could be a worthwhile consideration taking into consideration any potential growth alternatives.”

The latest renovation of Stadium Drive Elementary Faculty, which was in-built 1972 as a mirror picture of Pine Tree, price greater than $8.3 million. The newest renovation of an elementary college within the district – Blanche Sims – price $26.6 million.

Orion Township Supervisor Chris Barnett stated the township is two eventualities for what to do with the constructing and property.

“We do not intend to maintain your complete constructing there. We’ll examine how we are able to fully demolish the constructing and go away solely the infrastructure, the parking zone and the driveway and the park facilities which are there,” Barnett stated. “The second possibility could be to selectively demolish many of the constructing and protect the fitness center, which was constructed within the early 2000s.”

Lake Orion Superintendent Heidi Mercer stated in a video posted on the district’s web site in January that it might not have the ability to help two of the three applications — Autism Spectrum Dysfunction and Extreme Emotionally Disabled — beginning within the fall of 2025.

“Finally, our Lake Orion taxpayers could be paying to function a constructing and a program that may nearly solely serve college students from exterior our district,” Mercer stated. “The LOCS administration didn’t take into account this a fiscally accountable possibility.”

Employees salaries and programming prices have been coated by Oakland Colleges for the previous seven years. All repairs to the constructing have been the duty of the district.