Proposed land deal between Edwardsville District 7 and church has some upset

EDWARDSVILLE A proposed land deal between District 7 schools and First Presbyterian Church has some neighborhood residents and church members upset and asking questions before a school board vote planned for Monday night.

First Presbyterian Church has stood in a historic neighborhood of Edwardsville since 1923, and its next-door neighbor is Columbus School, which has been in use since 1886. A product of its times, Columbus has only 19 parking spaces for 45 employees, and so for many years the church has allowed the school to use its parking lot for parking and dropoff and pickup of students.

To improve the safety of students, the school district looked at acquiring the church property.

The school district has offered First Presbyterian Church $800,000 for the church property, and another $500,000 to pay for the building demolition and asbestos abatement, for a total of $1.3 million paid over 10 years. The church would handle the demolition and remediation of the site, at which point the school district would construct playground and parking space with a new dropoff and pickup system that also would require some rerouting of streets and/or traffic changes to be authorized by the city.

The sale contract still has to be approved by the District 7 school board, which will consider it on Monday night. The street changes also will have to be approved by the Edwardsville City Council in the future.

The money would be paid from the district's impact fees, which are funds paid by developers when they construct residential developments. Impact fees may only be used for acquisition of new property, new construction or renovations to address crowding, not for district operations.

Superintendent Ed Hightower said that it's getting crowded at Columbus, which is at 315 N. Kansas St., and he is worried about students' safety, particularly during the morning and afternoon rushes with 359 students exiting the building.

"We are very fortunate that we have not had an accident of major proportions," Hightower said. "It's a very unsafe condition, and with the number of kids that are transported and the number of parents picking up their children, it needs to be a better situation."

Meanwhile, First Presbyterian is going forward with plans to move its congregation to a new building on Ridgeview Road, out on the growing east side of town. Pastor John Hembruch said the old church has "many deficiencies" in terms of handicapped accessibility, asbestos and maintenance issues. In 2009, the congregation voted to proceed with the concept of a new building.

Hembruch said their plan was three-fold: a capital campaign to raise funds, selling their old property, and sale of some of the 29-acre Ridgeview property, as their new building will only require about 10 acres.

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Proposed land deal between Edwardsville District 7 and church has some upset