The theater site at Van Dyke and Dale Mabry isn't suitable, the school district property manager says. So on goes the hunt for land - and neighbors' acceptance.
By JEFFREY S. SOLOCHEK, Times Staff Writer
Published January 14, 2005
LUTZ - School Board officials didn't like what they saw when they took a closer look at the abandoned Hollywood 20 movie theater as a potential middle school site.
So despite the district's growing desperation for property in booming northwest Hillsborough, district property manager Jill Lemons recommends walking away from negotiations for the movie theater land at Van Dyke Road and N Dale Mabry Highway.
"The movie theater is a done deal," Lemons said. "It was not an economic and efficient use of the district's money. The feasibility is best suited by going to a vacant site and building new."
A group of real estate experts are combing the area for a new location, she said.
School Board Chairwoman Candy Olson expressed disappointment, but not surprise, at the staff's analysis. Reuse of existing buildings can be a costly venture, though it was worthwhile to explore the Hollywood 20 as an option, she said.
The result, though, left Olson vexed.
Too often, she said, the district has found suitable property, only to be challenged by neighbors. It happened in the search for a Lutz high school, and it's happening in the effort to place an elementary school in Keystone.
Homeowners have challenged the scope of a proposed elementary school in the new Highland Park subdivision before many of them have even moved into the neighborhood.
Meanwhile, the kids keep coming at a near record pace.
"It distresses me that some people in the community seem so adamantly opposed," Olson said. "It's not like we're putting Ybor City or BayWalk next to them."
She suggested the time has come for the district to take a different tack.
"I wonder if it would be productive to put together a community advisory committee of people who live up there and have them tell us what they want, because we're not getting too far this way," Olson said.
Hillsborough is the latest in a long list of school districts that have looked to turn an old structure into a school. A district in Phoenix converted a mall to a campus. Milwaukee's school district used an old brewery.
Usually, districts go this route because they cannot find enough land.
St. Joseph's Hospital, which hopes to build a hospital west of the theater, also expressed an interest in buying the Hollywood 20. The building is owned by Santo Carollo and Bill and Andrea Nye.
