
DATE: Saturday, July 26, 1997               TAG: 9707260457

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:  139 lines

COUNCIL ASKED TO ENTER TAYLOR FRAY SOME SAY PLAN WILL ``RIP OUT THE HEART'' OF WEST GHENT

While one of the city's most affluent and stable neighborhoods has become a battlefield over the fate of a beloved school building, the City Council has declined to enter the fray.

But some residents are turning up the political pressure on the council to intervene over West Ghent's Taylor Elementary School. The School Board voted in February to demolish the 80-year-old school.

``We ask you not to shirk your duty . . . and sit on your hands and say you can't do anything about this,'' Carter Furr, a West Ghent attorney and former president of the Norfolk Historical Society, told the council Tuesday. He was one of seven people who lobbied the council to get involved.

What's at stake, they argue, transcends dollars and cents and classroom amenities - all reasons cited for building a new school instead of refurbishing and enlarging Taylor.

The real issue, they say, has to do with preserving a sense of placeand fabric in a city that already has destroyed much of its architectural history in the name of urban renewal and progress.

Robert Wojtowicz, an art historian at Old Dominion University, said that older buildings such as Taylor form an important civic glue that can't be replaced by new construction.

``That building is the centerpiece of West Ghent,'' said Wojtowicz, a former resident of the neighborhood but not part of the current lobbying effort. ``It forms, architecturally, the heart of the community. To tear it down would be to rip out the heart.''

Furr and others contend that school property is owned by the city, under the city charter, placing the ultimate responsibility on the council as to whether the building should be saved.

The School Board must focus primarily on classroom issues, the residents argue, but the council should take a broader viewpoint.

``In this particular situation, the issue is not educational,'' said West Ghent resident Alice Allen-Grimes, who'll have two children at Taylor this fall. ``The issues are neighborhood issues, historic issues, that really aren't within the purview of the School Board.''

Board members said they agonized over the decision. But in the end, said member Joseph T. Waldo, a Ghent resident, the board concluded that renovation would be too expensive - at least $1 million more than the $6.5 million projected to build and equip a new school - and also could not bring the school up to state code on such things as floor plan and classroom sizes. There also wouldn't be room for future expansion, officials said.

The preservation proponents, however, want the city to fund an independent study on the cost and feasibility of renovating the existing building. They also asked that the council take the lead in seeking a state review on whether the school qualifies for listing on the Virginia Landmarks Register and the National Register of Historic Places.

On the advice of its consulting engineer and hired architects, the School Board plans to build a new school in front of the existing building, placing it about 90 feet from West Princess Anne Road. The old school would later be demolished to make way for open space.

The decision has bitterly divided the neighborhood.

Board members - and many parents who live in West Ghent - say they're convinced a new school is the wisest use of taxes and also would better serve children's educational needs in the coming century.

``There's nothing dearer to me than Taylor, but what I see is horribly decrepit, deplorable, falling-down mortar and brick,'' said parent Jenny Cavender, a third-generation Taylor alumna who supports a new school. ``It was a poor design for a school from the beginning of time. It would be fiscally irresponsible to do anything else to that building.''

Other parents, however, argue that the school could be renovated and enlarged, a course that would also teach children the importance of maintaining links to the past.

In the neighborhood, there's a strong emotional attachment to the school. It was designed by John Kevan Peebles, one of Virginia's most famous architects, and opened in 1917.

The school, the only historic public building in the neighborhood, some architects say, is the focal point of the community. Liberty bonds were sold there during World War I; it served as a hospital in the flu epidemic of 1918; it was a fallout shelter during the Cold War. Three generations of some families have been schooled there.

The issue also has created dissension within City Hall. The city's Design Review Committee, an appointed board, split 3-2 in May in favor of the new site plan. Committee member Robin W. Ingram, who opposed the plan, wrote a two-page letter saying the Taylor issue warranted further study and better documentation of the costs - both for renovation and for a new school.

``The very memories, shared experiences, sentimental ties, design, history, families, achievements and failures are the extraordinary threads that create the rich tapestry that weave a city's collective identity and history,'' Ingram wrote. ``We need to respect and hold on to more places such as Taylor, not discard them.''

Ingram wrote that parents ``have been asked to choose between an incomplete, understudied and underfunded renovation proposal or a brand new, state of the art complex that they have been assured is less costly. Given these choices, any responsible parent would choose the new complex.''

Calling themselves the Parents, Alumni and Friends of Taylor School, residents who favor renovation have created a Web site on the Internet, printed bumper stickers and mailed promotional literature to gain support for their cause.

On Tuesday, they gave council members the results of a random telephone survey of 417 city residents that indicates broad citywide support for preserving Taylor, as well as historic buildings in general. The poll was conducted recently for the group by Issues and Answers Network, a Virginia Beach market research firm.

Asked whether they'd favor either a new Taylor or a full renovation if the cost for both was the same, 67 percent of respondents supported renovation, according to the poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

If the cost to renovate was greater, the number of respondents favoring renovation dropped to 46 percent, while 44 percent favored a new school.

Within the Taylor school district, 52 percent of respondents supported renovation even if it would cost more than building a new school, the poll showed.

So far, the group has failed to sway the council.

Mayor Paul D. Fraim, whose ward encompasses West Ghent, said the council has confidence in the School Board.

``As a public policy matter,'' Fraim said, ``if people could step around the School Board's decisions by coming to the City Council, it would completely undermine their authority and ability to run the system.''

Fraim said that he started out thinking the school should be renovated but has become convinced that it ``would not do justice to the children's education.''

``No one has a stake in tearing that building down, as far as I can determine,'' Fraim said. ``This is being done with the best interests of the children in mind, that's my observation. We want to do the right thing, and the first thing is to keep the politicians out of it and let the School Board make the right decision.''

He acknowledged, however: ``This is an issue on which reasonable people could disagree.'' ILLUSTRATION: TAYLOR ELEMENTARY: A CLASH OF VALUES

The issue: The School Board's decision in February to demolish the

80-year-old Taylor Elementary School in West Ghent set off a flurry

of petitions for and against the plan. Some residents argue that the

City Council could save the building if it wanted to.

WHAT'S AT STAKE

Some residents say: The building forms an important ``civic glue''

that can't be replaced by new construction.

The School Board says: Renovation would be too expensive and would

not bring the school up to state code on floor plans and classroom

sizes. KEYWORDS: TAYLOR ELEMENTARY SCHOOL NORFOLK SCHOOL BOARD

NORFOLK SCHOOLS