ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 15, 1997 TAG: 9701150036
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: BELSPRING
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
Residents of the Belspring-Parrott area of eastern Pulaski County seem generally to agree that the best use of the former Belspring School building is to tear it down.
That would still leave a playground, picnic shelter and ball field on the 4.5-acre site where the abandoned building stands. There is an outside chance it might also become a future post office site.
But demolition of the building will get rid of an asbestos problem, which is a major concern of Fire Chief Robbie Stoots. He is worried about children playing in the supposedly off-limits building and developing future health problems from inhaling asbestos fibers.
About 40 people came to a community meeting Monday night to discuss the building's future. County Supervisor Joe Sheffey, who conducted the meeting, said his hope had been to persuade postal officials to put a combined Belspring-Parrott post office on the school site and include a community room in the building.
If nobody objected, he said, county officials will make that proposal to postal officials this week.
While it seems likely that the separate postal facilities on leased properties in Parrott and Belspring will be replaced by a combined facility, nobody knows how likely it might be that the government would pick the Belspring School site. Likewise, Sheffey was unsure whether such a project could include a community room.
But, as Sheffey observed, no one will ever know if the idea is never proposed.
Such a facility could also be used as a voting place, he said. The county will have to relocate its polling place by June, in time for the 1997 primary.
Belspring School was closed years ago but remains county property.
Sheffey persuaded the rest of the county Board of Supervisors to appropriate $90,000 to handle the problem posed by the abandoned school. Since then, the county has secured a $10,500 bid for asbestos removal, and two demolition bids - $63,715 to tear down the entire building, and $38,375 to tear down all but a wing built in the 1950s, which could be refurbished with money left from the $90,000 total.
The prevailing sentiment at the community meeting seemed to be to tear down the whole building.
Teresa Davis of Parrott said she was worried about a lack of facilities for youth activities, and for such gatherings as family reunions.
"We don't have any place big enough to have anything," she said. "You either go to Radford, you go to Dublin, you go somewhere else besides here."
"We're still going to have a playground," Sheffey said. "We're still going to have a picnic shelter. We're still going to have a ball field ... at least four or five months out of the year."
He got few volunteers when he asked whether community residents would pledge to maintain a community building, if the county built one.
"There is still a need for a community structure for community meetings. There is still a need for a polling site," he said.
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