Clancy parents whose sights are set on reopening the community’s old gym eagerly await test results that will largely determine how they might proceed.
Dani Morris lives in the subdivision next to the old gym and her children attend Clancy School. She said she is the “ringleader” for a handful of parents who approached the Clancy School board last October to express interest in reviving the old building, which she said has been closed for about a decade.
Board members have supported their efforts, she said.
“It’s sad to see it sit here empty and not being used,” she said. “It would definitely be an asset for the community.”
It hasn’t sat completely unused, for the school district uses it for storage. But Morris said that purpose falls short of the building’s potential. It could house polling stations during elections, host events to save wear and tear on the newer gym at Clancy School, and give people a larger place to gather than the meeting room in the Clancy Old Red Schoolhouse next door, she said.
And the parents want it to remain a gym as well. Morris said her husband, who coaches basketball, is always looking for practice space.
“It’s actually very hard to find spot for kids to practice,” she said.
The parents again appeared before the school board in March, this time for permission to move forward with testing to assess whether hazardous materials are present in the building.
A brownfields assessment grant is paying for site testing. The grant is among a series administered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which defines brownfields “as real property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant.”
If testing identifies the gym as a brownfield site, the program’s other grants are available for cleanup and related activities.
Morris said arranging for the testing began in February, about a month after she and the other parents were connected with the Jefferson Local Development Corporation through its board president and Clancy resident Adam Senechal.
“I reached out to Dani as I knew she was the driving force behind the Old Clancy Gym revival,” Senechal said by email. “With Dani’s desire to help revitalize this building to be used by the community, I felt it was the perfect project for JLDC to assist in the process of repurposing it.”
While Morris is too new to Clancy to have used the gym when it was open, Senechal said he went to elementary school in Clancy and attended gym class and events such as the annual Halloween Carnival there.
“I also remember a time after the school discontinued active use of the space that community members could reserve the gym for private use,” he wrote. “[It’s] going underutilized as a storage facility.”
The JLDC in turn got the Montana Department of Environmental Quality involved to help facilitate the EPA-funded testing.
Eric Woodland, an environmental project officer with the DEQ, said Monday by email that the agency had one document left to approve and was scheduled to begin inspection and sampling Tuesday.
“It may get delayed, but not likely,” he wrote. “Some preliminary results will be generated within a week, but most results will take about 30 days after they are sampled.”
Because they need test results to “find out what needs to be done,” the parents have no firm plans or idea of cost, Morris said.
“We don’t know what the future looks like,” she said.
Morris said people can follow their group on Facebook at www.facebook.com/clancyoldgymrevival/ for updates.
In addition to support from the school board, the parents have received “lots of public comment and support and offers of help,” Morris said.
“I haven’t yet run into anyone who’s opposed,” she said.
