Matt Helms

Detroit Free Press

Four abandoned Detroit Public Schools facilities will be torn down this year, city officials said Tuesday.

Crews began demolishing the former Houghten Elementary School on Lamphere, south of McNichols near the Brightmoor neighborhood. The building had been closed since 2009 and over the years fell victim to scrappers and the elements. Neighbors and others had urged the city to tear it down once it became unusable.

Neighbor Beulah Carter brought her daughters and granddaughters to see the beginning of Houghten’s demolition.

“We’ve been waiting for this for years,” said Carter, who’s lived in the neighborhood for 20 years.

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Dan Bandrowski, co-director of Wellspring, a nearby faith-based youth development center, said scrappers stripped metals and other valuables from the school. And then a couple of years ago the roof drains stopped working, and huge pools of water collapsed the roof.

“There had been some efforts to consider reusing the school, but after a certain amount of time it wasn’t cost effective anymore,” Bandrowski said. “So at that point we went to work trying to get it demolished.”

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Bandrowski credited Mayor Mike Duggan's administration and Councilman James Tate, who represents the city’s District 1, which includes Brightmoor, for helping to get the school demolished.

City officials said Houghten will cost $695,000 to tear down. The other three schools to be demolished this year — Birney, Detroit City/Longfellow and Greenfield Park — will cost a total of nearly $2 million.

Stephanie Young, manager of District 1 for the city’s Department of Neighborhoods, said the school became an eyesore, but the city couldn’t do anything about it until Duggan and the school district came up with a deal in 2014 for the city to forgive more than $11 million in DPS debt to the city for electricity in exchange for the district turning over 57 vacant schools and 20 vacant lots to the city.

“Once we were able to get ownership of those properties, then we were able to start making some moves like the one we see today,” Young said.

Brian Farkas, special projects director for Detroit's blight demolition effort, said the city would leave Houghten’s parking lot intact for Wellspring to use. But for the remainder of the school property, the city will work with community groups and residents to figure out what to do with the vacant land once the building is completely cleared out.

Contact Matt Helms: 313-222-1450 ormhelms@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @matthelms.