Two years after the Hamilton County schools’ former chief financial officer played a central role in the decision to close a magnet school operating out of the old Brainerd Junior High Building, he is making an equally strong move to help shape its future.
Tommy Kranz, who now works with Emerson Russell Management Corp. (ERMC), was one of several spokesmen who appeared before the school board’s facilities committee to help present the company’s proposal to purchase the dilapidated school building for $12,500, and then spend another $6.
25 million renovating and converting it into a new headquarter for its operations.
ERMC is growing rapidly, he and other company representatives said, and its employees work out of a number of locations scattered throughout the area.
The opportunity to move all those workers into a single location – with room for still more if the corporation grows as expected – was ERMC’s incentive to come up with a proposal to make such a plan feasible, they said.
Several neighborhood residents also attended the meeting, and indicated that the community likes what it has seen of ERMC’s proposed use of the building, which has been vandalized and undergone significant damage since the board decided in 2009 to close the school.
Also on hand for the meeting was W.C. Helton of Helton and Associates, the firm which transformed the old Alton Park School into a sparkling new community center with tenants – including a medical center – which provide much-needed services to residents of the area.
Helton admitted it will take him longer to restore the old 21st Century Magnet School in Brainerd that it would take ERMC, because he doesn’t have millions of dollars to pour into the project.
However, his offer for the building – $50,000 – was four times as large as that of the corporation bidding against him.
Even at that, school members indicated they did not think the offered price was adequate.
Noting that the old school was recently appraised for $350,000, officials gave bidders one more week to return with their “best and final offers” before beginning the official process of deciding whether to sell the building now or hold until it until they can get more money for it.