The Cobb Board of Education didn’t have to consider declaring eminent domain to purchase land for sports facilities near Walton High School Thursday night.
That’s because earlier this week, the owner of 15.2 acres of property on Pine Road agreed to terms with the Cobb County School District on a selling price.
Marc Smith, the district’s chief technology and operations officer, said representatives for Thelma McClure approached the district with a signed contract offer for $3 million.
That’s what the district had been offering, a price it said was 10 percent higher than the appraised value for the two parcels of land, one of which is directly across from the Walton campus on Bill Murdock Road.
The board voted 7-0 on the land purchase. The $3 million price doesn’t include closing and other costs that are part of property transactions, Smith said.
The district intends to build a softball field and tennis courts that were displaced in 2014 when construction began on a new Walton classroom building.
The Cobb school district had been negotiating with McClure for nearly five years, to little avail, due to differences over price.
“The only thing that’s different now is that eminent domain signs went up,” said Post 6 school board member Charisse Davis, who represents the Walton cluster.
Under eminent domain, public agencies can acquire private property for public use but must pay just compensation.
Before the vote, a resident living near the McClure property expressed surprise and concern about the possibility of eminent domain, and what may be built on the land.
“I feel heartbroken for her,” Rachel Slomovitz said, referring to McClure. She also asked “will my home be across the street from a parking garage?”
Slomovitz also said the sports facilities would add to additional traffic in the Walton area.
Caroline Holko, a former Cobb commission candidate who’s running for the Georgia House District 46 seat in East Cobb, said she didn’t like the idea of “eminent domaining an old lady out of her house for a softball field.”
Davis said while she understands those who may wonder “how can you do this?,” she said those impressions aren’t accurate.
“She was willing to sell,” she said of McClure, who inherited the land from her late husband Felton McClure, who was part of the Murdock family that owned farmland in what is now East Cobb. “She’s not living there.”
The wood-frame home that lines Pine Road (above) and was built in the 1920s has been vacant for many years, and most of the land is wooded and has never been developed.
Walton softball parents have been lobbying the board and the district to be relocated back to campus soon after having to play at Terrell Mill Park for the last six years.
Although the district has pledged to do that with funding from the current Cobb Education SPLOST 5, the team’s absence from campus has caused some issues relating to Title IX, a federal sex discrimination in education law.
Among the law’s sports provisions is for equitable resources, including facilities. The Walton boys baseball team has remained on campus, while girls softball has been displaced.
Davis said the land purchase is “the first step” toward rectifying some of those issues. “We’re going in the right direction.”
Get Our Free E-Mail Newsletter!
Every Sunday we round up the week’s top headlines and preview the upcoming week in the East Cobb News Digest. Click here to sign up, and you’re good to go!
