Bridgewater residents vote
to demolish former school
By Scott Mitchell Johnson
BRIDGEWATER – Residents decided at a special meeting last Wednesday night that the town should demolish the former Bridgewater Grammar School.
According to Town Manager Amanda Dow, 35 people attended the meeting with all but one voting in favor of the demolition.
“I would like to have seen a few more people attend, but it was a pretty good turnout,” she said. “It was good to see some community support.”
In addition to calling for the more than 60-year-old building to be torn down, townspeople voted to have the rubble hauled away and the hole filled with gravel. That option will cost $32,670. The other option – to demolish and bury the building on site – would have cost $9,800.
Dow said the majority of the funds will be taken from the school capital reserve account.
“We’ll be taking $22,692.75 from the school reserve account and the remaining $9,977.25 will be taken from surplus,” she said.
The Bridgewater Grammar School closed June 30, 2009 and the building was turned over to the town July 1, 2009. Students now attend school in Mars Hill.
A building/planning committee was established at the urging of the board of selectmen to see what could be done with the structure. After determining that the school was poorly laid out and not ADA compliant, committee members felt it would be too difficult to renovate the building to make it more useable for the town.
Dow said no bids have been awarded as of yet.
“It will go to the board of selectmen again,” she said. “Now that we have town approval, the board will award the bid at the Oct. 13 meeting. The demolition will probably begin a few weeks after that.”
The former school property – 11 School St. – may one day be the site of a new community center or even a multi-purpose building which would house a community center and a new firehouse. Dow said the town is “diligently seeking grant funding” to help with a future community center, which was identified as the town’s greatest need.
The Bridgewater Grammar School building was constructed in the mid-1940s as a replacement to the high school, which burned down.
The school was turned over to the town July 1, 2009. Residents voted in November 2008 by a vote of 232-108 to close the school as a cost-saving measure.
