BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. — Some Sullivan County Board of Education members argued that the group was making decisions too fast, one or two hinted that they weren’t moving fast enough, and others countered they were going at exactly the right pace. But after seeing the results of a community survey about what to do with three surplus schools, the board agreed to put all of them up for auction.
The recently vacated properties of Holston Valley Middle and Bluff City Middle — whose students now attend the new Sullivan East Middle — will soon be put up for sealed bids. So will the buildings and ballfield of the old Holston Institute, which closed in 1979 and has since functioned as a storage space.
After voting to retire the three schools at its February meeting, the school board ran an online survey asking community members for their thoughts about what to do with the properties. The poll ran from Feb. 21 to March 1 on the Sullivan County Schools website.
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Participants had several options: sell them for private or business use; make them a space for community events and have a third party or nonprofit manage them; tear down the structures and sell the land; or do something different (the last was a write-in category).
Almost 300 people completed the survey. The results made one thing abundantly clear: Sullivan County residents want those school buildings to remain standing.
Forty-seven percent of respondents recommended making Bluff City Middle a community space; 35% recommended selling it for private use; 14% recommended razing the buildings and selling the land; and 4% wrote their own recommendations. Holston Valley Middle received similar numbers with the same ranking of preferences. For the Holston Valley Academy properties, 38% picked selling to a private owner; 37% picked a community space; 18% picked tearing it down and selling the land; and the rest wrote in recommendations.
While the details of the bidding process still need to be hammered out, Bluff City Middle already had a potential bidder Thursday — a Piney Flats business owner who wants to buy the property and turn it into the community space that many survey respondents asked for.
Chris Laisure, CEO of Business Information Systems, detailed a vision for the empty school for the board Thursday night. Laisure said he’d renovate the space to make it a historic site, then donate it for the use of nonprofits that could use it to expand their work in Sullivan County. Good Samaritan Ministries, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and several other nonprofits already expressed interest, Laisure said. His vision also included a war memorial for veterans, a community banquet hall and activity area, and grounds and football fields that a variety of kids’ groups could use.
Laisure said he “saw the concerns of citizens” about what would happen with the building and wanted to help them keep that space for community use.
“Please embrace this young man’s project,” Betsy Carrier, a Bluff City resident who had been in talks with Laisure about his proposal, said during the public comment period that night. “I think it would be good not only for Bluff City but for boys and girls everywhere who would be coming in [to use the building].”
Multiple board members praised Laisure’s proposal. Even board member Mark Ireson, who said he was concerned the group was “moving too fast” with the retired properties, said Laisure’s proposal convinced him that Bluff City Middle was ready to be sold.
“You did exactly what I was hoping, that the community would come together and say, ‘This is what we’re after, and this is what we’re wanting,’” Ireson told Laisure. “It’s a fantastic presentation.”
The board unanimously agreed to put Bluff City Middle and the Holston Institute up for private bids. But Ireson and several other board members voted against putting Holston Valley Middle up for bids yet; they argued that the community needs another month to think over what to do with that school.
“Nobody really knew what the [community survey] results were until tonight,” Ireson said. “I’m hoping somebody will see that the community wants this to be something we can use. But we’re kind of pushing them. They don’t have a lot of time to get a group together.”
But the board voted by a slim majority, 4-3, to auction Bluff City Middle. Some who voted to move ahead with the bidding said they view the empty properties as a growing financial risk.
“I have a sense of urgency here,” Mark Hughes, the board chairman, said of his desire to put Bluff City Middle up for sale. “We’ve had years that we’ve been talking about selling these properties, months they’ve been vacated. Just one leak in that gym could ruin the floor and really hurt the value.”
Hughes and several other board members added that the bidding process would still take some time, and the group didn’t have to accept the first or the highest bid that comes their way.
“I think everyone on the Board of Education has an interest in doing something for the community” with the space, Hughes said. “It’s not in the interest of the community when the grass is getting high and the building is vacated.”
The Holston Institute was built in 1886, rebuilt in 1911 after a fire, and closed in 1979. Bluff City Middle and Holston Valley Middle — which opened in 1932 and 1935, respectively — both closed after their students transferred to the campus of the new Sullivan East Middle in January. Collectively, the three schools served Sullivan County students for more than 250 years.
Former staff members and students of the three retired schools, echoing many of the survey responses, said they hope the facilities will remain hubs for bringing community members together.
Jess Lockhart remembers Holston Valley Middle as a sort of “community treasure chest” during his 31 years of working there.
“Anytime there was any need of anybody within our school, our faculty and staff would always pull together to help,” said Lockhart, who joined the staff as a teacher in 1987 and served as its principal from 2001 until his retirement in 2018. “We were more of a family than a faculty.”
During Lockhart’s last year there, a fire destroyed the home of one of the students. Lockhart said the faculty organized a drive for clothes and supplies to send the family. Soon, after an “overwhelming response,” the student’s parents “started having to reject things because they were getting too much,” Lockhart said.
Lockhart — who now works part-time as a graduation coach at Sullivan East High — said he’s open to different uses for the old school as long as it remains a community space.
“There’s just so many memories people have of that place, whether working there or going to school there,” Lockhart said. “To see it torn down would be heartbreaking for me and a lot of community members.”
Sam Jones, a county commissioner from Kingsport, shared similar feelings about the old Holston Institute. Jones went there for 12 years and graduated in 1966. Every Labor Day weekend, he said, 80-100 members of his class get together to reminisce and stay in touch.
“They come from all around. Some from Texas and Cincinnati, Nashville, Alabama, Georgia,” Jones said. “It was just a great environment [at the school]. Lifelong friendships were created.”
When Jones was a student, the baseball field was a cow pasture (it could get messy, he said), traveling evangelists taught Bible lessons during assemblies, and you could learn blacksmithing and other farm trade skills in the shop class in the basement. He said he’d love for the property to remain an education center.
“A lot of us would love to see Holston become a classroom extension of Northeast State Community Center,” Jones said. That would take a lot of work and funding, he acknowledged, and so far, Jones and a group of others who share that vision haven’t been able to realize it.
As the board works to formalize the bidding process, they have a little more time to try.