The Trenton Times published the following article on April 20, 2013. To read the full article, click here.

Neighbors of crumbling Trenton elementary school tell city officials they feel ignored

By Erin Duffy/The Times of Trenton 
on April 20, 2013 at 7:15 AM

TRENTON — On a cloudy Thursday morning one week ago, a scraggly black and white cat darted across a stretch of asphalt cluttered with weeds, beer bottles and slivers of broken glass.

The cat was headed for the former Cook Elementary School, the crumbling remains of which stood in stark contrast to the shiny playgrounds and picnic pavilion at the city’s new $2 million Greg Grant Park, located just two blocks away. Earlier that morning, the city held a well-attended ribbon-cutting ceremony for the East Ward park.

Down on Cuyler Avenue, where the Cook school has stood since 1910, neighbors said they were feeling ignored. Where was their neighborhood demolition, their celebration of new construction?

“Greg Grant Park should be down here,” said resident Amos Mabry, who attended the elementary school some 40 years ago. “It should be down here, where Greg learned to play ball,” Mabry said, referring to the former NBA player and native son.

“In its day, it was a nice building,” local city activist Dion Clark said. “But that day and time has gone.”

Several neighbors walking by the old school last week all said the same thing: “what are they doing with this building?”

East Ward Councilwoman Verlina Reynolds-Jackson has joined in the chorus, asking Mayor Tony Mack what the city’s plans were for the building at an East Ward town hall meeting last week.

The elementary school closed in 1977 and was briefly reopened a decade later to serve as an alternative school. Offices for the school district’s child study team were housed there in 1990 and it became an alternative school again in 1995. After an outcry about sending students to the dilapidated building, the school was abandoned once again. The school district sold it to the city for $1 five years ago.

Plans came and went over the years to tear the building down and replace it with affordable housing.

Clark shook his head as he surveyed the school’s condition now.

“I went to school here and it’s a disgrace,” he said. “You see the stuff blowing out of the windows. Look at that, sticking up like a spear,” he said, pointing to a jagged piece of glass sticking out of the ground in front of the school. “All it is is a shelter for all the animals that hang around here.”

Copper and piping inside the school have long been torn out by vandals, the roof is covered in mold and a fence meant to keep trespassers and kids out of the school was torn down last year when a car careened into it during a police chase.

“The kids play up there,” Mabry said, pointing to a rickety fire escape. “They dare each other: ‘can you slide down those rails?’”

Housing and economic development director Walter Denson said the city hasn’t forgotten about the eyesore school and even fielded an inquiry in the past year or so from a developer interested in building on the property.

“It’s not that we’re ignoring it, it’s that we’re trying to get a complete list of huge, vacant properties and the best ways to comprehensively address them,” he said. “The
building’s huge, it’s been there for a long time, the windows are broken out. I’m not even sure what the environmental conditions are. The Cook School is something we’ve been talking about, we just haven’t solidified any plan yet.”

Denson said the city was working with the Capital City Redevelopment Corp., nonprofit Isles Inc. and the Housing and Community Development Network of New Jersey to survey large, abandoned properties around the city and catalog them.

Some of the older buildings will probably require demolition, but some may be able to be rehabilitated and redeveloped, he said.

“When we talk about wanting to conduct economic development and a lot of different things, it’s important to know what we have to offer, to tell people conditions,” Denson said. “If someone says they want a building of this size, we know what we have, we know everything else related to that particular property.”

Letitia Thomas, who attended kindergarten at Cook, said she just hopes change comes soon. The terrible condition of the school reflects badly on the whole neighborhood and the homeowners who work hard to maintain their houses.

“To let this school get to this level, why would the government do that?” she said.

Contact Erin Duffy at (609) 989-5723 or eduffy@njtimes.com