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A former mayor has added his voice to those of local residents criticizing the site of a proposed new elementary school.

At a hearing Tuesday night before city council, Wayne Kucich said that if the McKeesport Area School District takes the so-called Buck estate property via the eminent domain process, it will hurt "not only McKeesport residents but the adjoining property owners as well."

The 37-acre Buck property, which adjoins Penn State's McKeesport campus and Henderson Road in White Oak, would be better used for housing, which would generate tax revenue and attract new residents, said Kucich, mayor from 2000 to 2004. He now lives in White Oak.

"The worst thing is that this guy doesn't want to sell his property, and (the school district) is going to make him sell it," Kucich said. "Why don't they take some of the abandoned properties in the city, and use those instead?"

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The hearing was necessary because the school district is seeking a variance, or so-called "conditional use," from the city's zoning ordinance to build an elementary school on 26 acres of the former Buck property, which spans the city and White Oak. Council is expected to vote on the request at its Wednesday meeting.

The request was unanimously approved earlier this month by the city's Zoning Hearing Board.

The vacant property is currently owned by Robert and Joanne DeTorre of White Oak, who live in the former Buck home along Henderson Road.

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DeTorre, 70, told council last night that he doesn't want to sell, and he objects to the school district trying to take the land through the eminent domain process.

"There were no negotiations or anything," DeTorre testified. "We sat down and they said, 'We're going to take your land.'"

DeTorre told council he would like to subdivide the land and sell it for a housing development. The property could support up to 70 single-family homes, he said.

"To take this land and develop it into a school instead of housing is a travesty," DeTorre said. "Surely there are other sites where a $34 million school would be an asset --- places where you are getting no tax revenue."

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The proposed school is the third piece of a years-long building program underway that will reduce the district's five elementary schools to just three serving kindergarten through sixth grade. An expanded Francis McClure school in White Oak is already operating and a new school is being built on the former site of Cornell Intermediate School in the city.

When the three new schools are operating, George Washington and Centennial schools in the city are to be closed. Each of the new schools is being designed to accommodate about 700 students.

District Superintendent Tim Gabauer, who also testified, said that school officials have looked at more than a dozen sites over the past five years, only to rule each of them out for one reason or another.

The school district was close to building the new school on the so-called Palkovitz property along Eden Park Boulevard, only to stop short after city officials objected, citing traffic concerns and the need to evict several residents from their homes.

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"There's not a single property we've looked at that wasn't displacing someone --- sometimes multiple residents," Gabauer said last night. "Actually, that's one of the advantages of the DeTorre property --- there's no displacement of anyone."

The present site of George Washington school is hard to get to and lacks parking, he said, while the Centennial school site is too physically close to Cornell.

As for suggestions that the district expand Francis McClure or Cornell even further, those are non-starters, Gabauer said. "You're talking about a monster of a school building, and academically, it isn't a good idea," he said.

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Citing the region's ongoing population losses, City Controller Ray Malinchak asked Gabauer if the district could simply "freeze" its current plans for several years.

"I'm concerned that in 10 years, another 700 students will not exist and in theory we'll have an empty school building," said Malinchak, who plans to run for mayor this fall as an independent.

But Gabauer said some of the district's older buildings --- Centennial opened in 1921 and George Washington opened in 1928 --- are long past their useful lives as schools. "The buildings are to the point where the infrastructure will no longer last into the future," he said.

Furthermore, several schools are already overcrowded and students have been housed in temporary "modular classrooms," or trailers, Gabauer said.

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City Councilman Darryl Segina cautioned his colleagues that they weren't there to rule on the merits of a new school --- simply on whether to grant the district's request for conditional use of the property.

Still, Segina expressed his own reservations about the district's plans. "As a taxpayer and a citizen, I'm concerned that we're losing 13 acres of taxable land," he said. "I think it's senseless to build a school up there ... and I think McKeesport is going to be the loser in all of this."

But Council President Mike Cherepko, a teacher at Francis McClure school, said the new schools will be assets to the city.

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"There are a lot of pros and cons to this site," said Cherepko, the Democratic candidate for mayor. "Personally, I greatly anticipate seeing this school being built, but I don't think we're here to debate whether or not a school should be built."

As for DeTorre's suggestion that the property would be better used as housing, Cherepko noted that DeTorre owned the land for 24 years and made no move to subdivide it for development.

"I think having three brand-new educational facilities is attractive to the city," Cherepko said. "I think they're things that will help us market the city."

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Council meets at 7 p.m. Wednesday on the second-floor of the public safety building (former city hall) at the corner of Lysle Boulevard and Market Street, Downtown.

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