In recent weeks, Alpena Public Schools officials closed Alternative Choices for Educational Success Academy on Pinecrest Street, with plans to relocate the program to Alpena High School. Talks with a developer have begun about moving APS’s transportation facility from M-32 to property near Alpena High. And APS officials have pondered closing and selling the district’s central office on Gordon Road.

Those moves would add to a list of 11 schools APS has closed over time as enrollment declined and finances no longer supported the schools.

Each time, the district left the community with memories and forced residents to adapt to new uses for the facilities in their neighborhoods.

Alpena resident Nora Bouchard, for example, attended classes at the now-former ACES building when it housed Oxbow Elementary School. She remembers walking home from the school for lunch and walking to and from the school with the rest of the neighborhood children.

News Photo by Crystal Nelson Maple Ridge Township resident Louis Srebnik on May 27 is pictured in his home across the street from the former Maple Ridge Elementary School.

Bouchard said the school has always been a part of living in the neighborhood and the neighbors knew what to expect. They know the school is open September to June, that the neighborhood is quiet, and they enjoy the wildlife that lives in the nearby woods.

Bouchard said she understands why APS officials closed ACES.

“I just hope they make a wise decision who they sell it to, thinking about what might go here,” she said, “because there are houses just right on the other side of the woods right there. That’s the only worry, is if it will change the neighborhood.”

‘BRINGS BACK SOME MEMORIES’

Maple Ridge Township resident Louis Srebnik attended Maple Ridge Elementary School as a child and moved in across the street from the building about 14 years ago.

“I can remember being out on the side of that playground, playing with all the other kids and stuff,” he said. “And here, down the road, I ended up buying property across from there. Brings back some memories.”

But the building no longer houses a school.

Closed in 2004, the Dietz Road facility was originally sold to Jake Reebel, who owned the Scarecrow Village-The Ridge with his wife, Sandy.

Reebel sold the building in February to Karl Harmon for $55,000.

Alpena County officials could not say how Harmon planned to use the building and The News couldn’t reach Harmon for comment on this story.

Srebnik said the property has changed hands a couple of times since he moved in, but he’s happy the property doesn’t sit vacant.

‘ADDS TO THE TAX BASE’

Several former APS schools dot the county, in varying degrees of use for various purposes.

The same year APS officials closed Maple Ridge, they also closed Hubbard Lake Elementary School. Since then, officials have closed Long Rapids and Sunset elementary schools.

St. Paul Lutheran Church officials purchased the former Hubbard Lake school and its surrounding 20 acres from the district for nearly $73,000 in 2008, according to county records.

Northern Michigan Wildlife purchased the former Long Rapids school for $90,000 in 2015, county records show. The group operates the facility as Northern Promotions.

Bingham Elementary School closed decades ago, but Bay Mills Community College reopened the building as Bingham Arts Academy in 2004. The charter school closed in 2015, and Dargis Properties now owns the building. Hope Network, the firm hoping to develop the former school, wants to transform it into a 35-unit independent living facility for people 55 and older.

APS now uses Sunset for a homeschool program and leases space to a preschool.

APS also has shuttered Avery, Baldwin, Green, Gordon, McPhee, and Ossineke elementary schools over the years, APS Superintendent Dave Rabbideau recently told his Board of Education, but he provided no additional details about when the buildings closed or what became of them.

When school districts sell property to businesses, that property goes back onto the county’s tax roll, helping raise money for schools and state and local governments.

With a combined countywide property value of over $1 billion, “one parcel is not going to make a big impact,” Alpena County Equalization Director Ted Somers said. “But it just increases the tax base for the county and allows them to collect a little bit more of their operating millage, of the townships’ operating millage, the library’s operating millage — it just adds to the tax base value.”