Consol Deal Targets School Newly Listed As Historic Building

Granting historic status to Whitewood High School in Buchanan County was designed to preserve the school. But barely a month after it was placed on a national historic register, the school could be on the brink of extinction.

Consol Energy Inc. has made this pitch to Buchanan County, which owns the school and surrounding land: The company would buy the property, demolish the vacant building and haul off the debris for free, and in its place build a new community center with a walking track and playground. Then return the property to the county. Plus, the county would get $115,000 in cash.

This is the sort of deal a multibillion-dollar energy company can afford to make, especially when it could spare itself potentially costly red tape required when mining near a historic structure.

The Whitewood school, placed on the National Register of Historic Places in September, is less than a mile from Consol’s Buchanan No. 1 Mine – the largest coal mine in Virginia, whose operations the company plans to expand.

State and federal regulations protect historic buildings in part by requiring mining companies to include in permit applications any affected historic sites. State regulations also prohibit or limit mining on any lands where it “will adversely affect any publicly owned park or any place” on the national register without approval from the state and the agency with jurisdiction over the property.

Consol’s proposal, which will be unveiled at a public meeting Monday, would leave Buchanan County with only one historic site, and has angered residents who for two years worked to get the Whitewood school on the historic register.

It also has alarmed officials at the state’s Department of Historic Resources that the very regulations designed to protect a historic site might have created an incentive to demolish it.

But the brewing controversy sheds light on more than the fate of a school: It illuminates a conflict inherent in the relationship between the company and the county – one between those who live on top of the ground and those who profit by digging it up and sometimes putting it back together.

Consol has made concerted efforts over the past year to improve its image in Buchanan County by investing there. The new-building-for-old proposal is the latest exhibit in that balancing act.

The Whitewood School

The two-story brick structure was among the first high schools in Buchanan County when it opened in 1941. Whitewood grew to accommodate nearly 1,000 students at its peak enrollment as a combined elementary and secondary school, though it has been vacant for most of the past decade as a result of school consolidation.

An assessment by a state architectural historian said the building is the “most prominent and significant architectural landmark” in Whitewood, in a county with only one other historic building – the courthouse in Grundy. Local residents, led by Belinda Honaker, have for two years worked to place the school on the historic register. Honaker, who heads the nonprofit Youth Outreach of Buchanan County, said she and others have cleared classrooms of seats and sundry junk piled to the ceiling with the hope of obtaining grants to rehabilitate the school and create an assisted-living facility.

Just this year, the nonprofit received donations of less than $1,000 from both Consol and CNX gas, a subsidiary, according to the company.

Honaker’s purpose in rehabilitating the school and starting a care center for the elderly is two-fold: It would provide a community service, she said, and a jolt of life into the community.

“The school was just sitting there and nothing was being done with it,” said Honaker, who lives within a few minutes drive of the school.

In its heyday, the Whitewood school “was the life of our community. Coal and gas wells have taken over everything,” she said. “It seems like a ghost town. If we can bring new life into that building, we can bring new life into the community.”

After a lengthy nomination process, which required the county’s approval, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources in June voted the Whitewood school onto the state register, and on Sept. 12 it made the national register.

But for Honaker and her crew, the celebration was brief.

That August, Consol representatives met with Buchanan supervisors for the first time to discuss the Whitewood High School, a company official confirmed.

But Craig Horn, director of the Industrial Development Authority, was the first to break the news to her, Honaker said. After supervisors discussed the deal in closed session earlier this month and set a public hearing for discussion, Horn and a Consol official met with her alone.

“The county thought it was a great deal,” she recalled from their conversation.

The deal

If the county agrees to it, this is what residents would get: Consol would demolish the school building and an ancillary building used by a senior citizens group. The company would dispose of the debris – including mold, asbestos and lead paint. A community center, complete with a playground, walking track and kitchen facilities, would be built and the structure would be returned to the county with all the surface land rights. The county also would get $115,000.

Asked last week what prompted the proposal, Consol spokeswoman Cathy St. Clair said: “We determined that the property is located in an area which may be impacted by future mining plans.”

St. Clair said Consol engineers predicted that underground digging could undermine the integrity of the building – a hazard known in mining terms as subsidence. She would not comment directly on whether the building’s historic status figured into the offer to buy the building.

“From my understanding, our concern was what might occur in terms of subsidence” – meaning the building, historic or not, could be impacted. “We discussed the package with the county, and it meets a number of needs the county has,” she said.

Honaker said the offer also, conceivably, meets one of Consol’s needs: the freedom to conduct business unfettered by state regulations triggered by a nearby historic site.

If the Whitewood school stays in the hands of the county, Consol would have to include the structure in every application for a mining or reclamation permit, as well as outline a plan to minimize negative impacts.

The Division of Mined Land Reclamation “may require the applicant to protect historic and archeological properties listed on ... the National Register of Historic Places through appropriate mitigation and treatment measures,” according to the state’s administrative code on protecting publicly owned historic sites.

Neither the state nor federal government, however, has any authority to stop the owner of a historic site from demolishing it.

“It’s an honorary designation,” said Randy Jones, a spokesman for the state DHR. “It’s actually a misconception: People think it interferes with property owners’ rights, but they can do what they want, technically.”

News that the school was on the sales block and could face demolition shocked Michael Pulice, the DHR architectural historian who surveyed the school and squired it through the nomination process.

“Needless to say, it’s very unusual to put something on the register only to find out there’s a serious threat because it was listed on the register,” he said in a phone interview last week.

In his 18 years of experience, he said, he has never encountered a parallel case.

“The whole idea was to preserve it,” Pulice said. “What does this say about the national register? The listing is what engenders [the school’s] destruction. The irony is beyond words, here.”

Questions of finance

From another point of view, the county has lucked into a bonanza – cash springing up from a decaying, unused building that would require expensive rehabilitation.

Restoring the school and bringing it into compliance with building codes, Horn, the county’s IDA director, estimated, would cost in the neighborhood of $5 million.

“It would be very hard with the mold problems, with the lead paint, the asbestos on the pipe wrapping and the floor tiles,” he said. “The county is looking at what’s best for the people.”

The preservationists, Honaker and the DHR, are insistent that there are feasible ways to finance that rehabilitation. Among them are tax credits for restoring historic buildings, and federal and state grants.

Honaker, through her nonprofit, went as far as buying $1 million in liability insurance coverage – at a cost of $2,500 a year – and retaining the firm J.A. Street to design a floor plan, which cost nearly $8,000. She said she and her group were banking on a state Community Development Block Grant, which must come through the county, and for which she has not yet applied because she is awaiting county approval.

Pulice is a believer.

“The county and the IDA don’t really have a good understanding of what incentives are out there to help [Honaker and her group] do this,” he said. “I’ve seen other old schools be brought back and put to good use by nonprofits,” he said. “The IDA is a little nervous this group won’t be able to pull it off.”

dgilbert@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2558

YOU SHOULD KNOW

* Topic: Proposal to raise Whitewood High School and build a new community center
* Date: Monday, Oct. 27
* Time: 5 p.m.
* Place: Twin Valley High School in Pilgrims Knob, Va.