Spring Valley Elementary demolished

Former students and staff watched Spring Valley Elementary collapse during the start of its demolition.

Former students and children and staff of Elyria City Schools watched the shuttered Spring Valley Elementary School, 1005 Rosealee Ave. in Elyria, collapse into pieces early Feb. 28 during the start of its demolition.

Workers of ProQuality Land Development Co. of Campbell, Ohio, used excavators to begin making room for the future pre-kindergarten through eighthgrade Northwood Campus, 570 N. Abbe Road.

The former Spring Valley Elementary shares 25 acres with the site that will become the new school, according to Mary Wright, executive assistant to the superintendent of Elyria Schools.

Doug Gantz, 57, of Elyria, was a student at Spring Valley Elementary in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Gantz watched the entirety of what once was his kindergarten class, crumble.

“This brings back memories and has me shaken a bit,” he said.

Wright maintains historical information on Elyria Schools.

She said the territory

where Spring Valley Elementary is located was annexed from the Elyria Township Local School District to the Elyria City Schools on Sept. 7, 1954.

At a July 6, 1954, Elyria School Board meeting, members approved naming the new school “Spring Valley Elementary School,” and the playground and recreation area the “Whitman Recreation Field,” she said.

Additions to the building

were made in 1959, 1964 and 1981, Wright said.

Spring Valley Elementary closed as an elementary in June 1996 and reopened as the Early Childhood Center.

The Childhood Center closed in June 2012 and was moved to the Administration Building’s Kindergarten Village and renamed Elyria Early Childhood Village, Wright said.

ProQuality is working

with AECOM/AGS of Cleveland, on the demolition and building of all schools involved in the district’s master plan.

The Northwood Campus is expected to be finished by August 2019, according Amy Higgins, director of communications for Elyria Schools.

BRIANA CONTRERAS — THE MORNING JOURNAL Workers of ProQuality Land Development use excavators to begin demolishing Spring Valley Elementary School, 1005 Rosealee Ave. in Elyria on Feb. 28. The razing of the building will make room for the future pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade...