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Mecklenburg County Passes On Property In Davidson

Mecklenburg County commissioners have passed on their first-right-of-refusal to 5.1 acres of property owned by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools in Davidson. At Thursday’s meeting, county commissioners voted to pass on the property, which houses a vacant school and gym. This paves the way for officials in Davidson to purchase the property from CMS.

Last month, CMS board of education members approved the sale of the South Street property to Davidson for nearly $2.5 million, pending last night’s vote by the county commission. In 2008, the property was appraised at nearly $3.7 million.

Davidson officials plan to use the more than 33,000-square-feet of space to alleviate the town’s growing need for facilities to house government offices, including the local police and fire departments.

“We believe that it is important to purchase this site so it remains in town control in perpetuity,” Mayor Rusty Knox said. “We’ve been working with our partners at CMS and the county for several months and are very pleased with the results.”

Knox says due diligence will be performed on the site over the next sixty days and the town expects to close on the property in early December.

Before plans are drawn up on how the property will be renovated to accommodate town offices and some form of community space, public hearings will be held to get input from residents on what they would like to see at the site. Those plans will come with some restrictions since the school and its gymnasium, built in 1948, are listed on the Charlotte Mecklenburg Historical Landmarks roster as historical sites. Any changes would need to be approved by the commission.

In the early years, the school was named The Davidson School with a name change in the 1960s to Davidson Elementary School. It closed in 2011 and was leased until June of this year by the Lake Norman Christian School. Davidson officials say they respect the site’s historical importance to the town and plan to respect that in whatever renovations are approved for the building.

Gwendolyn is an award-winning journalist who has covered a broad range of stories on the local and national levels. Her experience includes producing on-air reports for National Public Radio and she worked full-time as a producer for NPR’s All Things Considered news program for five years. She worked for several years as an on-air contract reporter for CNN in Atlanta and worked in print as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun Media Group, The Washington Post and covered Congress and various federal agencies for the Daily Environment Report and Real Estate Finance Today. Glenn has won awards for her reports from the Maryland-DC-Delaware Press Association, SNA and the first-place radio award from the National Association of Black Journalists.