A public hearing on the purchase proposal from Fort Dodge resident Steve Hebert will occur prior to the board’s discussion and vote on whether to approve the sale of the former Riverside Elementary School, 733 F St.

Hebert, who lives across the street from the property, initially approached the school district about purchasing part of the Riverside parcel that’s actually located on the other side of F Street, district Executive Director of Financial Services Brandon Hansel said.

“It’s on a little hillside that’s really unbuildable and it just kind of collects leaves and trash,” Hansel said. “He called me inquiring whether or not we would be willing to sell him just that little slice so he could maintain it.”

The district had recently listed the property for sale, so Hansel asked him to consider buying the whole property. Hebert eventually made an offer for $178,000.

At the school board’s July 24 meeting, the board passed a resolution to publish a notice of the proposal and set a public hearing on the matter for 6 p.m. Aug. 14. At Monday’s meeting, following the public hearing, the board will discuss and vote on whether to authorize the senior administration to move forward with executing the purchase agreement.

Riverside Elementary School served the west side of Fort Dodge for many years. The current building was built in the 1960s, Hansel said, and saw hundreds of students pass through its classrooms over the years.

According to previous reporting from The Messenger, in May 2012, to meet a $1.7 million budget shortfall, the district repurposed Riverside Elementary as an early learning center and reduced its staff.

Until the Early Childhood Center opened in the former Arey School in 2021, Riverside Early Learning Center housed the district’s preschool, pre-kindergarten and transitional kindergarten classes. For about a year, the building sat empty, until the students and staff of Cooper Elementary School moved in temporarily in January 2022 while the Cooper building underwent a major renovation project.

“Just as the population of this city has ebbed and flowed over the years, there used to be a lot of kids in that neighborhood around the Riverside community and as that area has kind of gotten older, those numbers have diminished to the point where all of our other neighborhood schools are serving those kids at this point in time,” Hansel said.

With tight operating budgets and declining enrollment, he said, it just didn’t make sense for the district to keep spending money to maintain a building it has no use for.

“It is one of our oldest buildings at this point and if we were to remodel anything, we would need to make some significant investment in the building,” Hansel said.

Replacing the old steam boiler system would alone cost about half a million dollars, he said.

Selling Riverside isn’t a decision the district made on a whim.

“We have a facilities committee that meets and we went through and we’ve mapped out multiple scenarios of if and how and what we could use it for and we just haven’t found a really solid reason to say we should really invest in this building and keep it going,” said Superintendent Josh Porter.

Hansel said that the district leadership is sensitive to the fact that Riverside was the district’s only presence on the west side of the Des Moines River.

“We feel badly about that,” he said. “But at the same time, if you look at our student population and where they reside, there’s not really a big demand for a facility over there.”

Hansel said he does not know what Hebert has planned for the property if the sale goes through, but the district would like to see it used for a positive purpose in the community.

The Messenger reached out to Hebert by telephone and left a voicemail. The call wasn’t returned by press time on Thursday.