Brick's Laurelton School Set To Go Up For Auction

BRICK, NJ — The Laurelton School, home to students for more than 70 years, is expected to go up for public auction in September under a resolution the Brick Township Board of Education approved on Thursday.

The sale of the school, which has been in the works for months, is scheduled for 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Sept. 4, at the district's administration offices, 101 Hendrickson Ave.

The property on Route 88 where the school sits was subdivided in a move approved by the Brick Township Planning Board in January and formalized in February. That subdivision created two lots; one fronts on Route 88 with the Laurelton School, the other fronts on Princeton Avenue, where the district's storage building is located.

The school board passed a resolution in March approving the sale of the portion of the property where the school sits on the grounds the district no longer has use for the school and that selling it would save the district money. The sale had to then be approved by Lamont O. Repollet, the state commissioner of education. Repollet signed off on the sale in July.

With the approval of the auction, it will be advertised in the newspaper and potential bidders will have a chance to see the building in person at a meeting before the auction. There will be a minimum bid of $620,000, which business administrator James Edwards has said is the assessed value of the property.

The Laurelton School building dates back to 1934, but the site has been home to a school since approximately the 1870s, according to documents filed with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. It served as an elementary school at one point, and later was used as the district's alternate school for students struggling in the regular high school setting. It was completely shut down after the 2007-08 school year.

The building was deemed not eligible for designation as a historic site because the structure had been built too recently.

Proposals to sell the property have been floated several times since then, to no avail. The district first talked about subdividing the property in 2011, but previous proposals to do so failed to pass muster with the planning board.

The plan to sell the building has draw criticism over concerns about what the property will become. But the district also is under pressure to make significant cuts because the state Department of Education has slashed aid under the provisions of S2, the law passed and signed in July 2018 that mandates aid cuts to the district. At the July 30 school board meeting, the potential for combining schools and repurposing the buildings was raised as a possibility, one of many that will be under consideration for the 2020-21 school budget.

The minutes from the January 2019 planning board meeting include a discussion of the potential for the Laurelton School building to be used as a school in the future, and Township Planner Tara Paxton said the property, which sits in a B3 zone, would need a use variance to operate as a traditional school going forward.

This article has been updated to reflect the Board of Education's vote approving the auction.

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