The vacant, ash-colored stucco buildings with dozens of broken windows at 240 Oak St. in Lawrenceville were once part of a vibrant school campus.
Then they were used as Gwinnett County administration facilities and later environmental health offices.
For the past five years or so they’ve been vacant and the neighborhood eyesore.
With Gwinnett set to demolish the buildings, local officials and residents hope the area can someday become a hub of activity again.
“This whole area could use a shot in the arm,” said Burke Allen, owner of an Internet technology company directly across the street from the buildings. “There’s not a whole lot of curb appeal over there.”
Gwinnett’s commissioners voted last month to tear down the buildings and prepare the property for sale. County officials said asbestos found in the buildings poses a health hazard and has made the property nearly impossible to sell.
“It’s a very unhealthy building,” Commissioner John Heard said. “We’re ready for it to become clean and marketable and ready to go.”
Steve North, Gwinnett’s director of support services, said the property hasn’t had an offer in at least three years.
Once the buildings are cleared, North said, the property might be used as an overflow parking lot for events held in the nearby downtown square until a buyer can be found.
City officials and residents hope the property eventually will become a mixed-use housing development, an idea that was promoted heavily several years ago but lost steam as the economy worsened.
“It would be so exciting for people to be living close to the [downtown] square again,” Lawrenceville council member Marie Beiser said. “My vision is of the area being gentrified someday. I hope some developer eventually takes a chance on it.”
The property was once part of the city’s core. Local historian Mary Frazier Long said the town’s first settlers built a private school there in the 1820s. The property was known as Academy Hill and was the site of public schools — including Lawrenceville High School — through the 1970s.
Long, who graduated from Lawrenceville High in 1949, said the area needs some improvement but that she was sad to see the buildings go.
“I just hate that it won’t be the Hill anymore,” Long said. “That was once the heart of the town. This area used to be so much more alive when the school was there.”
About the Author
