INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — The Indian River County School Board unanimously approved sending two unused properties, including the old Osceola Magnet School, to the public auction block.
The former Osceola Magnet property, located on 20th Street in Vero Beach, along with the Pleasant Ridge Property, located on Old Dixie Highway, will be sold to the highest bidders during the Indian River County government public auction. That auction is expected to be held sometime in October.
The Indian River County School District’s Land Use and Acquisition Committee met earlier this year and recommended both properties be deemed “surplus” and sold off.
In both cases, the winning bid must be at least that of the appraised value of the property. For Osceola, that means a bid of at least $700,000. For the 3-acre Pleasant Ridge site, the bid must be $230,000 or more.
School Board member Karen Disney-Brombach said the School District “did explore all avenues” to keep the former Osceola Magnet site, but given issues with the property, it wasn’t best to keep it.
The minimal acreage needed to build a new elementary school and the water mitigation would have made the site impossible to rebuild on, she said.
“We were just not able to do it,” Disney-Brombach said.
Osceola Magnet was relocated to the former Thompson Lifelong Learning Center, south of Oslo Road last school year after chronic flooding issues forced the closure of the magnet’s campus.
As for the Pleasant Ridge property, School Board Chair Carol Johnson said, “We didn’t know it was our property for quite some time.”
She added that now the School District knows it is in fact theirs, they could sell off the property they are not using.
“I’m glad we’re moving forward,” School Board member Claudia Jimenez said. She attended the meeting by phone as she was unable to make it to the meeting in person.
