(Lake Park)– The Lake Park City Council Monday expressed interest in a possible land swap with the school district. As we reported previously, the school district has proposed a possible swap of land where the existing elementary school is located as well as some property to the north where a playground is currently located and another parcel of land in that same area that is currently vacant. Mayor Matt Carstensen says one requirement the city would have for the deal to go forward would be for the school district to demolish the elementary building before the city would assume ownership. School officials have already indicated they would more than likely be okay with that…
“We initially had a conversation about remodeling it into senior housing, the current building the way it is. After we got looking at that we made the determination that would not be economically a good decision to make. It’s the same reason the school backed away from, or the same reason that the school chose to go for a new elementary rather than remodel this one. You know, anytime you start remodeling you run into things you don’t always expect and then added cost. It’s just not cost effective to try to remodel something like that into senior housing at this point.”
Carstensen says single family residential housing would be the city’s likely intention for the current playground area…
“We’ve looked at it and determined that there’s room probably for 6 to 7 residential lots and, you know, when you start adding that up you could put single family homes or multi-family homes on there, you know, that adds to our school system. That’s part of this whole process, is with having a new school, we as a community need to make sure that we make the population more family-based so we continue to fill those classrooms that they’re providing for us.”
He says developing the adjoining vacant lot would be more of a challenge, however…
“The Presbyterian Church sat there 30 years ago, 40 years ago, in fact, and they built a new one south of town on the southern part of the community and when that was taken down there was a majority of the concrete that was buried there at that point. There wasn’t rules or regulations to that, so that does cause a few problems with any type of a development because that will have to be dug up and moved out of the area before you can do any type of a development whether it’s just basic water and sewer or whatever. It’s going to take some work to get some renovations done there.”
And as far as the current city owned land that includes roughly half of the baseball field and an area to the north of that, north of the middle school-high school, Carstensen says there’s no reason for the city to hold onto that…
“We do not see any benefits to the city to hold onto that ground versus letting the school have it for expansion or just improving their facilities in general.”
Carstensen says the school could use that additional land down the road to possibly relocate the softball and football fields. He says that would open up some additional options for the city park where the football field is currently located…
“Here again, you’re thinking into the future, not where we are today. How do we improve what we have and how do we prepare for the future? And I think that part of that is maybe some new sporting facilities. If you’re going to have a strong school system you have to have a strong sporting facility to support that. And that, obviously, would make room for more stuff in the city park. We’re in current planning with Beck Engineering out of Spirit Lake and we’re looking at a whole park project, how that might look. Just futuristic planning. And I think that as a community, I think that’s our duty, to look to the future, not just what we have today and how we can improve it.”
Last (Mon.) night’s direction by the city council will allow Carstensen and city staff to conduct more formal talks with school officials.
