By Steve Plunkett
The old Boynton Beach high school will be a part of the city’s future at least a little longer.
City commissioners decided to keep the school’s local historic designation April 1 but restored its land-use designation to public and private governmental/institutional.
The commission in 2013 changed the parcel’s land use to mixed use to accommodate architect Juan Contin’s plan to turn the school into an event and destination venue.
City Attorney James Cherof, who met with commissioners in a private attorney-client session to discuss the breach-of-contract lawsuit Contin filed against the city, urged that the land use be changed.
“I think that restoring the land use puts the property back into the configuration that it was,” Cherof said. “I think it benefits the city’s position in the litigation.”
The change passed on a 3-2 vote with Commissioners David Merker and Mack McCray dissenting.
But a proposed ordinance to cancel the school’s historic designation failed on a 4-1 vote with Mayor Jerry Taylor on the losing side.
Because it was the first reading of the ordinance, the public was not allowed to speak.
On March 18, when the measures were first discussed but tabled, residents spoke primarily about restoring the high school.
“I believe it would be a tremendous mistake to destroy that building, and these couple of resolutions which are on the agenda certainly point it in that direction,” resident Charles Gaulkin said.
History teacher Susan Oyer, of the pioneering Boynton Beach family, said residents cannot go forward as a city if they do not maintain their past. She had her students send letters to the commissioners opposing the measures, she said.
“I haven’t met a single person who wants to see something bad happen to this building,” Oyer said.
But Taylor called the school, which opened for classes in 1926, a health and safety hazard.
“That building is loaded with asbestos. Anybody going into that building needs to be wearing a hazmat suit,” he said at the March 18 meeting.
Taylor said the school would collapse if a hurricane struck and that another developer or the city would need $8 million to recondition it. That, he said, is $8 million the city doesn’t have.
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