Jessica Bies

The News Journal

Christina School District is finally selling an office building it bought, renovated and mothballed in 2005 –– although it will still be on the hook for $5 million in debt for a site it has used only as storage the past 12 years.

Originally purchased in March 2005 for $12.8 million, the building never housed any students, despite an additional $9 million spent to transform office and warehouse space into educational space. Instead, the 178,000 square feet of renovated space was used for storage. The property has cost the state at least $22 million. It's been on the market since 2009.

The silver lining to this story is that the modern glass facade at 300 Executive Drive in Glasgow will be sold to Del Monte Fresh Produce, which will bring new jobs to New Castle County.

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Some 300 to 500 workers will be needed to package fresh-cut fruit, make protein salads, create fresh sandwiches and help ripen bananas and avocados, said Dionysios Christou, vice president of marketing for Del Monte. The facility will employ 27 full-time employees within its first year and anticipates reaching full capacity sometime after December 2019.

Once the sale is final, Christina will be left with about $5.26 million in outstanding debt. Almost $4 million of the proceeds will go to the state, which provided a large chunk of the money used to buy and renovate the building.

Joseph Wise, district superintendent when Christina purchased the building, in 2015 said the school district followed correct procedures when buying the building. School officials had envisioned the building as the new home for as many as 1,200 middle-school students.

"It is my understanding that the superintendent at the time had big plans to make that building into a school," School Board President Elizabeth Campbell Paige said.

But a lawsuit initiated by the City of Wilmington accused the Christina School District of failing to comply with the Neighborhood Schools Act. A Delaware court ruled the school district violated the law and ordered it to completely reconfigure the district. Once the reconfiguration was complete, the district found it no longer needed a school in that area.

So the building sat empty.

"It's long overdue," Paige said of the sale. She insisted that the building sitting dormant for 12 years was not the fault of district staff. There has been lack of interest among potential buyers, she said.

In 2015, the state Office of Budget and Management slashed the price by almost half in an effort. When the building first hit the market, it was listed for $14.9 million. The final sales price came down $8.4 million.

Christina has been under pressure by district residents to sell the building. In 2015, several residents voted against a referendum partly because of the building, arguing that if the district needed more money, it could sell 300 Executive Drive.

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But while selling the building seemed like an obvious solution, the reality of divesting the property is far more complicated.

Title 10 Section 1057 of the Delaware Code mandates school districts that built or purchased a property with money generated through the sale of state bonds must use any profits created through the sale of those properties to reduce the debt on the bonds. The proceeds cannot be used to reduce operational expenses such as lighting, heat and teacher salaries.

While Christina did eventually pass a different referendum, Paige said she's glad the building is now out of the picture.

"Every time we go to have a referendum the topic comes up," she said. "Now we can take the funds we are using just to maintain the bare bones of that building and use it for something else."

Contact Jessica Bies at (302) 324-2881 or jbies@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter @jessicajbies.