Endangered History: Old Central Gym

by Woody Jenkins

The Old Central Girls’ Gym at the corner of Sullivan and Hooper roads is about girls’ basketball and a lot more.

Built around 1927, the gym was used as a community meeting place for everything from high school graduations to proms to a special celebration for Central’s only Medal of Honor winner, Homer Wise.

Today, it  is used as a storage room and is filled with excess equipment and supplies.

Day by day, the building is deteriorating.

It is a good example of endangered history here in Central.  Now a number of Central residents want to find out if the Old Girls Gym can be saved before it is too late.

The structural soundness of the building is highly questionable.  Metal rods are helping support the wide ceiling and preventing the building from collapsing.

When the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board relinquished control of its property on July 1, 2007, to the Central Community School Board, the interior of the gym was still well-maintained.

At that time, the new Central school board hired a firm to evaluate every building it inherited.

The Old Girls Gym was evaluated as hazardous and unsound.  Supt. Mike Faulk immediately forbade use of the building for safety reasons.  Today it is only used to store equipment and old textbooks and paperwork.

Vickie Carney, president of the Central and Greenwell Springs Historical Society, is promoting public awareness of the historic building.

Steve Vassallo, the City of Central’s economic development specialist, is researching the possibility of state grants to rehabilitate or at least properly evaluate the facility.

School board member Jim Lloyd, who serves as chairman of the board’s Facilities and Building Committee, has personally toured the building.  As a contractor, he understands what would be involved in trying to save, rehabilitate, and use such a structure.

On Wednesday, Lloyd said it is important to understand that the old gym was constructed of inferior materials and that it is structurally unsound.

Lloyd said any plan for preserving the building needs to provide funding for not only rehabilitation but also maintaining the building on an on-going basis.  Such a plan would also need to take into account how the building would be put to use and whether it would stay in the same location or be moved, depending on the fate of Central Middle School, he said.

When asked if he thought the building could be saved for a few hundred thousand dollars, Lloyd said probably not.  It would be very expensive, he said.

Another option would be preserving parts of the old gym, such as the gym floor, and integrating it into the next new school Central builds.

When the new Central School Complex is complete next year, the student body will vacate Central Middle School and move to the new School Complex.

The school board has not yet decided how to use the site at the corner of Hooper and Sullivan roads.  Parts of Central Middle School have been condemned, and many people have called for its demotion.

Some people advocate tearing down the old school and selling the property.  Others suggest rehabilitating the buildings and using them for a City Hall and a School Board office.  Others say it would be less expensive to tear the existing buildings down and build new facilities.

The Central City News has proposed leasing out the property to a developer who would build a Town Center with a City Hall, Post Office, School Board office, retail center, and some residential.  The developer would pay the school board for the development rights and an on-going annual use fee.

No matter what is done, the school board will have to decide whether to keep or move Wildcat Stadium to another location.

And it will have to decide what to do about the Old Girls Gym before nature decides for them.

by Woody Jenkins