July 7, 2015: Will all or part of the Gladbrook school complex come down? It seems inevitable.
Of course, eventually, the question had to be asked. Now that the Gladbrook-Reinbeck school district will remain intact, what is going to be done with the closed building in Gladbrook?
GR (and North Tama) superintendent David Hill knows close up what happens through inaction: You get what happened to the Geneseo building, except worse since this one’s in the middle of town. A blog post last month from Hill says the city isn’t interested in taking over the whole building. However, the fitness center and pool remain in operation (answering an unasked question I alluded to earlier). The rest of the building, however, will need something done about it, and that means demolition.
Looking at the photo above, and thinking about the times I was at Gladbrook, it’s clear that this building and so many others could have had decades more of service. If only Iowa had enough children to fill them.