The school’s final class of students left at the end of the 2021-2022 school year last May. On Thursday, the Ogden School Board approved preliminary plans calling for demolition of the East Bench school at 2130 Taylor Ave.

Demolition details need to be hammered out, but school officials approved a plan that would cost up to $490,250 and turn the area into public greenspace. Razing of the school could start by Oct. 10 and be done by early December, according to school paperwork.

However, Zane Woolstenhulme, the district business administrator, said the final demolition scheme would likely be a hybrid of the actual plan approved and a less-involved $254,265 proposal.

Broadly, the plan is to remove the school structure — originally built in 1950 — and replace it with grass while also installing a sprinkler system to keep the land irrigated, according to Woolstenhulme. The playground area east of the school would remain, as would the parking lot on the north side of the school, creating an area where visitors can park.

Tim Vandenack, Standard-Examiner

Eventually, the tentative plan would be to sell the Taylor Canyon Elementary land, measuring 4.23 acres and sitting in a residential neighborhood, though those details still have to be hammered out. “We’ll be maintaining the field until such time we don’t have it any more,” Woolstenhulme said.

Plans for the eventual closure and demolition of Taylor Canyon date to 2018 when voters approved a bond issue calling for reconstruction of Polk Elementary, among other schools. Work on the new Polk building is largely done and it reopened on Friday. The areas that had been in the Taylor Canyon district were shifted to the Polk or New Bridge elementary districts per a redistricting plan approved last March.

Amber Allred, a member of the school board, said at Thursday’s meeting that she had reached out to some in the Taylor Canyon neighborhood, who favored the idea of turning the building site into greenspace. She also suggested considering xeriscaping the land.

“We can talk about that,” Woolstenhulme said.

The ex-Gramercy Elementary building at 1270 Gramercy Ave. is also set to be razed.

Tim Vandenack, Standard-Examiner

Gramercy closed at the end of the 2018-2019 school year, but the structure has remained. It housed T.O. Smith Elementary for the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years and it is to be used for the 2022-2023 school year to house the district’s special education administration offices. The special ed offices, located on the main school district campus at 1950 Monroe Blvd., will be getting a $3 million overhaul, which prompted the temporary relocation, according to Woolstenhulme.

T.O. Smith was replaced by the new Liberty Elementary, which, like Polk, opened on Friday.

Declining enrollment in the Ogden School District, plus the age of the Taylor Canyon and Gramercy structures, led to the decisions to close them. Dee Elementary, replaced with New Bridge Elementary, was demolished in 2017.