The Meyers High School property is up for sale at $4.38 million, according to online real estate listings.
The property includes the 250,000 sq. ft. school building with an auditorium and gymnasium and Wilkes-Barre Memorial Stadium, which contains a track and football field. The Wilkes-Barre Area School Board voted 6-2 Oct. 26 to list the property for sale with broker Gregory Barrouk of City Brokers LLC.
The district plans to close Meyers in South Wilkes-Barre when the district’s new consolidated high school in Plains Twp. opens for the 2021-22 school year. The district plans to merge its three highs schools — GAR, Meyers and Coughlin — and the new high school will have a new stadium.
The district put the Coughlin High School property on the real estate market at a price of $1.8 million in late July. The district plans to use GAR as a middle school.
The Meyers listings say it “would make for an ideal conversion to a mixed use multi family opportunity.” The exterior is made of brick walls with terra cotta lintels, stone cornices and a number of parapets, some of which were removed for safety in 2007.
The school’s main stairway is made of Giallo d’Istria marble with brass railings. The main auditorium features a stained glass work, including a ceiling with the state seal of the 48 states in the United States at the time of the school’s construction in 1930. The school also has space designated as fallout shelter.
During the Oct. 26 school board meeting, Solicitor Raymond Wendoloski said listing the property for sale was an effort to “see if there’s any interest out there with regard to developers” and “get expressions of interest in writing.”
School officials began studying new high school building options after the discovery of exterior deterioration at Meyers and Coughlin in 2014. The oldest portion of Coughlin closed in January 2016.
The new high school is being constructed on a 77-acre former mining site located along South Main and Maffett streets in Plains Twp. The district is investigating cracks discovered in the masonry exterior of the new high school under construction.
Contractors will pay to fix the cracking problems up by the roof of the structure, and the repair work won’t stop the project from finishing on time and won’t push district costs above the project’s $121 million budget, Wendolowski said last month.