Schoolhouse will not be moved
A plan to save the historic Lone Fir Schoolhouse, in the works for two years, has come to an end.
The Spokane Valley Heritage Museum has been notified by the current owner of the one room schoolhouse’s site, Jennifer Johnson of Jennifer’s Greenacres Auto Sales, is no longer willing to donate the building.
“We’re deeply saddened and disappointed,” said museum director Jayne Singleton. “A lot of energy and effort went into the project thus far.”
Johnson did not return a reporter’s phone calls seeking comment on the issue.
The site on East Sprague Avenue was previously owned by Bell RV, which made the initial pledge to donate the school. When the site changed hands last fall, the museum was told they could still have the historic building. “We met with Jennifer,” Singleton said. “She was very supportive.”
The Lone Fir Schoolhouse was originally built in 1894 in the Saltese Meadows area. It was moved to its current location in the late 1940s. “It became the first kindergarten in the Central Valley School District,” Singleton said. It stopped being used as a school sometime in the late 1960s or early 1970s.
Similar one-room schoolhouses once dotted the Valley, but Lone Fir is the last of its kind.
The museum was notified in April by Johnson that the building was in the way of expansion plans and needed to be moved immediately, a feat they couldn’t accomplish quite that fast. A site plan had been completed and a volunteer lined up to demolish the asphalt behind the museum to provide a new home for the old building.
But there had been delays. The original timeline called for the building to be moved this spring or summer, but it had been delayed by the death of the architect who did the site plan, Don Neraas, and by the death of project coordinator Mike Flanigan, Singleton said. Catlow Moving, which had agreed to truck the building to its new location, is in the midst of a large, six month job in Las Vegas, Singleton said.
“Something like this doesn’t happen in short order,” she said. “We did what we could to try and move this forward.”
At the end of May the museum was notified by letter that the deal was off. Johnson wrote that the school was impeding expansion plans and she would relocate the school to a different spot on the property. “I truly love this building and now have plans to use it myself,” she wrote. “I am rescinding the proposed gift of the said building.”
Singleton said she has been unable to get in contact with Johnson since.
Still, Singleton said she is glad that Johnson is renovating the building instead of tearing it down as she originally planned. “I’m glad to see it is being preserved,” she said. “We’re very, very glad to see she didn’t go that direction. We applaud her decision.”