Adelphoi plans school for Federal Building
Planning is afoot again to lease the second floor of the Federal Building in downtown Uniontown to Adelphoi Village, but this time for use as a school for students on probation, not as an overnight shelter for juveniles. The Uniontown Zoning Hearing Board denied an application in August from the Fayette County commissioners for a special exception to the city’s zoning ordinance that would have allowed Adelphoi to run the residential shelter in the building, which is in the central business district (C-2) zone.
The proposal drew a number of protests from Uniontown businessmen and residents, contending the downtown site was no place for such a facility.
When that proposal was shot down, Fayette County Commissioner Ronald Nehls said Adelphoi Village officials began talking to him about converting a portion of the building into a school.
Nehls said he has already met with the Uniontown mayor and council and will present the tentative plans at the Nov. 5 city council meeting, even though terms of a lease have not yet been negotiated with the Latrobe-based Adelphoi Village. “We’d like for them to come in,” said Nehls. “We want to come in totally having the mayor and city council aware of this. That’s highest priority, that we meet with city council.”
Nehls said the zoning ordinance allows schools in the central business district, so the matter need not go before the ZHB. Students would arrive in the morning and go home in the afternoon, said Nehls.
According to the ordinance, public, private, primary and secondary schools are classified as institutional uses that are permitted in the C-2 zone. The ordinance requires one off-street parking space for every four students at least 16 years old and one space for every 1.5 employees.
Nehls said a school for teens on probationary sentences satisfies the restrictions in the building deed. The county obtained the building from the federal government for $1, but the deed limits its use to certain governmental services.
Criminal or juvenile justice is among the uses permitted by the deed, and the county’s juvenile probation office has been operating there for some time.
Negotiations with Adelphoi will determine if a lease that covers the cost of renovating the second floor can be agreed upon, Nehls said.
He stressed that the idea is in its very early stages, and no details have been worked out yet.
Details like insufficient parking and the availability of residentially zoned property in the city were given as reasons when the zoning board unanimously denied the special exception application for Adelphoi to operate a staff-secured temporary shelter for up to 12 boys and girls 12 to 18 years old.
They could have been placed there by the juvenile probation office or juvenile courts due to abuse, neglect, truancy, delinquency or because they could not be controlled by their parents.
Because it would not have been a detention center, the doors could not be locked. Staff and electronic monitoring would have provided security.