Quick Take
After the historic Alba Schoolhouse in Ben Lomond burned down in the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex fire, the school district that owns the property and the community group that was leasing it hoped to rebuild. But insurance payments complicated those plans and now the district is studying how it might be able to sell the property.
The fate of the site of a historic Ben Lomond schoolhouse remains up in the air as the local school district investigates whether it can sell the land to the tiny volunteer-run parks and recreation district that long managed it.
It’s been more than three years since the 129-year-old Alba Schoolhouse burned to the ground in the CZU Lightning Complex fire. The one-room schoolhouse located in Ben Lomond is owned by San Lorenzo Valley Unified School District. For decades, it has been leased to the parks district, which ran it as a branch of the Santa Cruz Public Libraries system and a community space where people could host potlucks and an annual Fourth of July event.
After the 2020 fire, the district’s board voted in August 2021 to rebuild the schoolhouse. A community group launched a fundraising campaign that has so far raised more than $15,000 to help pay for costs not covered by insurance in order to restore the schoolhouse located at 12070 Alba Rd.
But the school district learned that while its insurance carrier would pay at least $575,000 toward rebuilding the structure, an estimated $250,000 in rebuilding costs wouldn’t be covered under the district’s policy. Meanwhile, trustees heard at the Nov. 15 board meeting that the district would be able to net $900,000 in insurance payouts after expenses if it chose not to rebuild.
The district’s trustees voted not to rebuild and instead collect the $900,000, since that wouldn’t involve spending funds on a project not directly related to student programs.
“This was a difficult decision to make as we know there are many emotions centered around Alba Schoolhouse and the significance of the building,” Superintendent Chris Schiermeyer said in a statement.
Schiermeyer said officials are now considering selling the property. They are working with the school district’s legal team to determine if it’s possible to sell the property to the Alba Recreation and Park District for $1.
Schiermeyer said the process of selling land is complicated by various state regulations. “This process is also very regulated as we are a school district, [a] public agency and we are in contact with our legal team on how this can be done,” he said.
Schiermeyer said there’s no timeline for when a potential sale could be finalized as the district has “just started the conversations.”
Alba Recreation and Park District board member Martin Mills said the parks district told the school board it’s interested in acquiring the property if it could do so at a “reasonable price.” He declined to give Lookout a purchase estimate.
If the parks district acquired it, Mill said it’s not yet clear what it would do with the property, though he said he’s heard ideas ranging from rebuilding the schoolhouse to installing a park bench with a plaque.
“I think all of us would love it if magically, we could wave our magic wand around and there’d be a new schoolhouse there, but at the same time, that’s a very expensive endeavor,” he said. “We certainly don’t have those kinds of funds at this point.”
Daniel DeLong serves as secretary for the Alba parks district and is on the board of the nonprofit created to raise funds for the rebuild, Friends of the Alba Schoolhouse.
Initially, DeLong said, school district officials said they might be required to sell the property through a bidding process. The parks district would have first right of refusal but would have to pay whatever ended up being the highest bid amount, he said.
“We don’t have that kind of money,” said DeLong. He added he has no idea what the market value of the property could be or what it could sell for, but the entire budget for the parks district is probably around $15,000.
He hopes the school district will sell it to the parks district for $1, or “next to nothing.”
DeLong, who partially led fundraising efforts, said losing the schoolhouse was heartbreaking for locals, as he described in a December opinion piece in Lookout’s Community Voices section. He said the fundraising campaign slowed to a stop after they realized that the district was likely not going to rebuild.
“We are waiting to see what the San Lorenzo Valley Unified School District decides,” he said. “Depending on what they decide, then we will move forward into whatever the future’s going to hold.”
The uncertainty over the schoolhouse has also left the future of the parks district in limbo.
Mills, the Alba board member, said the board has had preliminary discussions about potentially having to dissolve the parks district it can’t acquire the property. But he added that no decisions have been made about what will happen to the district if it doesn’t acquire the schoolhouse.
“There’s a lot of work that you have to do just to stay an official district,” he said. “I think it’s hard to envision doing all of that without that schoolhouse building.”
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