School Board Balks at Low Roosevelt Bid; Approves Superintendent Recommendation to Reassess Building

The Iowa City School District is going to hold on to the building a little bit longer.

During Tuesday night's meeting, the board voted to formally reject the $201,000 bid from developer Place Partners LLC in Iowa City for the now close elementary school building.

This followed a recommendation from Superintendent Steve Murley to not sell the building after the one bid the district received came far below its $770,000 assessed value.

However, when this assessment was first done, it did not include some of the restrictions requested by the Roosevelt neighborhood, such as the building not being turned into a strip mall or apartment building.

Murley said after the meeting that assessor the district used, Real Estate Analysts out of Cedar Rapids, told him that the assessed value would have indeed been lower if those restrictions had been in place at the time.

Rejecting the bid allows the school district members to see what the building should be worth even with the restrictions in place, and then to consider what should be done if this lowered the value to an unacceptable degree.