The West Bloomfield (Michigan) School District will be allowed to raze a century-old former elementary school after the Michigan Court of Appeals dissolved an order blocking the demolition.
The Detroit News reports that the Heart of the Lakes conservation group had contended in a lawsuit that the West Bloomfield school board violated the Open Meetings Act by failing to publicly deliberate other options for the former Roosevelt Elementary School building in Keego Harbor and instead “rubber stamped” a plan for demolition.
But a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals noted in its decision that two board members urged the rest of the board during its March 18, 2024, meeting to reconsider demolition before the board approved project bids by a 4-2 vote.
“Therefore, the Board did deliberate on the bids and did not merely rubber-stamp recommendations," the judges said. "Although the Board did not discuss each of the bids individually … the (Open Meetings Act) does not require a specific level of deliberation."
The school board voted in September 2023 to demolish the structure, saying it was no longer safe and that maintaining it would be an irresponsible use of taxpayer funding.
Heart of the Lakes took an opposite view; it argued that the district’s decision was financially unsound. During the March 2024 meeting, the board declined a $1.7 million offer from an architectural firm that wanted to renovate the building into rental units.
The court decided that the school district had the right to determine the most viable course of action.
The 70,000-square-foot school building opened in 1920 and closed in 2022. Parents, historians and elected officials banded together in an effort to save the building, and the Court of Appeals put the teardown on hold in 2024 to give activists time to file appeals.
Demolition had been planned for June 2024. District officials didn’t say when it would be rescheduled.
