No Bidders For Brick's Laurelton School

BRICK, NJ — The Brick Township school district will be starting the process over to try to sell the Laurelton School property, after no one showed up for Wednesday's public auction.

The only person who showed up for the auction, which was scheduled for 11 a.m. at the district's business office, was a reporter, district officials said.

One person picked up a bid package and two people toured the building at the pre-auction tour on Aug. 28, officials said, but while the district was bustling with students and staff on the first day of school, the business office was quiet except for staff.

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 for decades, but by the early 1980s 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, according to the DEP documents.

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 lot being sold is the one with the school. A walk around the exterior of the school in August showed a few windows boarded up after being broken. A peek in windows revealed shelving and other items, apparently sitting where they'd been left more than a decade ago.

The minimum acceptable bid for the property is $620,000, which business administrator James Edwards has said is the assessed value of the property.

Mary Carey, the assistant to the business administrator, said a new auction date will have to be chosen and advertised in the legal ads twice. The timeframe on that was not clear.

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