Josh Cotton, Warren County grant writer, is pictured discussing the start of work on Warren County’s plans for the former Youngsville Middle High School building.

Warren County School District board members are getting an understanding of how the county plans to proceed with work at Youngsville Middle High School.

Josh Cotton, county grant writer, provided an update on those plans during a recent school board meeting. Pointing out that while it is too early to give specific details, Cotton said progress is being made.

“We’ve had the lease for 26 days. But it’s been a productive 26 days. We’re focused at this point on gathering the information that we need to make the decision about the opt out by October 31.”

That is the next big target in the process. Cotton said the data collected is focused on informing the October decision. Among the things the county is trying to figure out is security, access and the needs of the space both for county services and potential partners.

The building was built to serve one purpose, Cotton said, while the requests for proposals for architects could include many uses. Proposals will be accepted until the middle of February in order for a firm to be in place by April 1.

Meanwhile, conversations with county entities and potential partners are underway, under a broad approach so that upon awarding a contract, the county will be informed on who will be coming, whether or not it will be a good fit and how much it will cost in terms of the capital to outfit the building.

The hope is to have that in place by mid August, and wrap up that process.

“The first phase is just kind of working through the logistics,” Cotton said. “Do those people fit getting some preliminary capital cost numbers? If those look good, we proceed with big docs and drawings – being sure that it’s viable is certainly where we have this lens.”

Expressing that the county does not have the goal of making money on the building, Cotton said that the financial benefit is calculating the cost avoidance.

“There are county services in places all over the county paying all kinds of varied rates, so being able to centralize some of those is a substantial savings for us, and in the bigger picture, this is about keeping that building a viable community asset,” Cotton said.

Cotton mentioned that he has been pushing to keep the gym and auditorium stay publicly accessible. What that looks like and how things will work are in discussion as well.

Cotton said it’s too early to discuss who the county is talking with since there are no capital costs available yet.

“I can’t offer rent terms,” Cotton said. “So it’s not fair for me to expect potential partners to make firm commitments. So I won’t discuss that.”

One of the lease terms is that the Warren County School District retains access to the athletic facilities and with that, Misty Moore, school board member, mentioned concerns for the distance between the location of the auditorium compared to the gymnasium in the building, especially in regards to safety for children.

“I guess, have discussions happened about that? Are you kind of looking to the architectural firm to kind of solve that for you?” Moore asked.

Cotton said that is an issue that is being worked on, but it’s too early to have firm answers because the county needs to figure out what renters’ obligations are and what their requirements are from the space.

“Well, that’s part of the security piece is just understanding the entities that are interested in coming with us,” Cotton said before continuing, “Auditorium and gym uses are going to typically be outside of the business hours window anyway.”

A member of the public asked, “You mentioned rent, Is that correct? You’re getting this lease for $1 a year, and you’re going to rent out to other entities?”

Cotton responded, “Our preliminary discussion about what that looks like is just to take the cost of utilities and then pro rated share of whatever that capital cost is. We don’t have that number yet. That’s really kind of where we are at in the planning as far as understanding what that looks like.”