There’s been a lot of back and forth as to what the status of the Forks High School’s 1920’s era facade is.
Here’s a recap of exactly what is going down:
1) Initial plans called for the facade of the 1920’s era building to be left as a free-standing structure in tribute to the original building.(see artist’s rendering at left).
2) It was announced on Monday that unexpected costs to make the structure safe and stable would run far ahead of what was budgeted
3) Forks, due to a legal requirement, has to hold a public hearing to determine what if anything should be done to save the facade. The date for the hearing is not as of yet set. The Peninsula Daily News gave the specifics of this requirement:
“The conditional use permit granted by the city to do the construction work requires the district to give the public time to save the facade through alternate funding, Superintendent Diana Reaume said Monday.
The bid by Primo Construction Inc. of Carlsborg includes an alternate additional $271,000 to reinforce the facade to remain as a memory of the 1925 school building, the rest of which was torn down in June.
“Our efforts to save the facade are not over,” Reaume said.
Under terms of the city conditional use permit, the school district must hold a public hearing and give the public 45 days to come up with alternative funding, Reaume said.
The date for the hearing has not been set, but will be shortly, Reaume said.
“Also, even though the alternate bid [to reinforce the facade] was rejected at this time, the district has 45 more days to go back and accept any of the alternatives previously rejected,” she said.”
4) Approximately 2 years ago when the Lexicon visited the town, Lori, Laura and other Lexiconers talked to various town members about Twilighters doing something for Forks. This was prior to the movies being released and Breaking Dawn wasn’t yet in print when this conversation began. At that time there was talk of trying to save the entire building and the Twilighters for Forks (a charitable 501c3 corp) was established to raise funds that could go towards saving the building or for the youth of Forks should the building not prove savable. We supported that group’s efforts. It should be noted that this group has/had no official decision making capacity over Forks High School construction. They are not in any way part of the school administration, just people in town who cared and wanted to try to do something for the kids.
The fund is still active, they have not decided exactly what this money should go towards but they are weighing their options. There was some widespread misconception that this fund was a brand new effort to fund the facade when some Twilight fans found an old link on the Forks Forum website. That link has since been edited to remove the Lexicon name because we haven’t been involved with that fund in quite some time. To quote one of the fund administrators, :
“Now that we seem to be back in the spotlight again, I talked to Chris at the Forks Forum and we are looking at updating the Twilighters for Forks page to explain where we are at and what we propose to do with any contributions. Until we get some feedback from the school and the construction manager, we are not sure what to put on there.”
5) There are currently bricks from the old building being salvaged and sold as a fund raising effort for the Forks High School scholarship fund. The district superintendent also spoke about this to the Peninsula Daily News:
“Because of the many people with memories of the high school and actual Twilight fans with attachment to the building, the district is in the process of having 1,500 bricks from the demolished portion salvaged, Reaume said.
The bricks must be professionally cleaned, then will be put up for bid at the 2011 Forks Scholarship Auction.
The money from the auction will not be used to save the facade(emphasis Twilight Lexicon), Reaume said.
“That money will go right back to the kids,” she said”
6) We just got a press release from the Dazzled By Twilight store that is located in Forks. They are the folks that do the driving tours around town. They are collecting money that will hopefully go to saving the facade if that is in fact that the town actually decides to save it. This is their own independent undertaking; they are not a 501c3; they are not connected with or have the authority over the school in any way. If the facade is not going to be saved, they state, “If we don’t raise enough money to save the facade, all proceeds will be donated to the Forks School District Stadium Fund.”
As this story continues to develop, we will continue to bring you the latest updates.
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