New Life for the Old Hemlock School

By Bob Bickel of the Democrat & Chronicle, 18 April 1983. Rediscovered by Lore Disalvo.

Hemlock - Hemlock School, abandoned last June when the school district decided to sell the building, will become a manufacturing plant in the future. But offices, a community auditorium and a playground also might be located there.

Recent zoning action by the Livonia Town Board has cleared the way for the Velmex Co. of East Bloomfield, Ontario County, to buy the two-story brick school and the land in the hamlet of Hemlock, Livingston County.

Superintendent James Franklin said last week the district and the company have agreed on a price of $11,500.

Velmex president, Jack Evans, attended Hemlock School when he was a boy.

The company makes roofing and siding components of copper and aluminum.

Evans outlined ideas for the site in a letter to the town board in February while his application for a change from residential to industrial zoning was pending. The board approved the change last month.

The company is interested in using a part of the school for manufacturing instruments and machines for the roofing and siding industry, Evans said.

To start operations, Evans said, Velmex expects to use much of the Hemlock space to store finished and unfinished copper and aluminum.

Evans expects the Hemlock facility to have four to six employees to start, with gradual expansion planned.

His company, he said, is one in which growth is “slow, consistent and solid” rather than explosive.

In addition to the industrial plant, he said Velmex has three other possibilities for the school:

- Renting some space for business offices compatible with Velmex and consistent with the zoning ordinance.

- Using the auditorium and gymnasium for community events. Evans said the company preferred not to use the space, and “hoped the community interest would be served by this.”

- Deeding the school’s old playground and its equipment to the town.

Evans said Velmex would have to do extensive painting, insulating nd interior changes before it could move in.

By a vote of 225 to 68 at a referendum in December, residents of Livonia Central School District chose Velmex as the buyer over James Slocum of Livonia, who proposed to convert the school to apartments.

The voters also authorized the school board to negotiate a selling price.

Evans said his plans for the school were based on business logic, but there was also a “twinge of sentimentalism in them.”

“I was in the sixth grade when the Hemlock School building was constructed and spent the following six years as a student there,” Evans said.