Tyrone Borough has given the owners of the old Lincoln Elementary School building until today to respond to a letter the borough sent to them last month.
Borough Code officer Tom Lang told The Daily Herald on Friday that the letter was sent out on Sept. 13 to S & A Homes of State College regarding what needs to be done to bring the building located on in 1300 block of Lincoln Avenue into compliance with the borough’s property maintenance code.
Lang said he had become aware of issues with the property from complaints he had received and his own observations.
Lang had previously informed Tyrone Borough Council that a meeting with S & A Homes was held on Aug. 3 to inspect the building. Lang said the meeting was scheduled so structural engineers from the company and the borough could investigate possible structural damage caused by the roof leaking and to determine the overall condition of the building.
Lang said the company has been working on some of the problems including boarding up some windows. Lang said he had not heard back from S & A Homes as of this morning, but the company had until the end of Tyrone Borough’s business day to respond to the letter.
He said if the owner of the building does not respond then the borough has the right to issue an official notice and order to repair the building under its property maintenance code. He said the borough also has other remedies it could use to have the property issues corrected.
A call to S & A Homes was referred to the corporate office in State College and a message was left there for the person handling inquiries about the old Lincoln Elementary School. They did not respond by The Herald’s press deadline.
The building was last used for classes by the Tyrone Area School District in April of 1999 and was sold soon thereafter to S & A Homes by the district. The building was originally used as a high school starting in 1911 according to information on the Tyrone Area Historical Society’s web site. The information noted that in 1929 an adjacent property owned by the Waring family was bought and razed to construct a junior high addition.
When the district opened a new high school in Snyder Township in 1962, the Lincoln Avenue location became an elementary school. It was closed when a new elementary school on Clay Avenue started operations in the late 1990s.
