MORGANTOWN – Pending appeal, the title to approximately one acre of land that was once the Junior Avenue home of Suncrest Primary School has been transferred to the city of Morgantown to be used as a public park.
That was the ruling of Monongalia County Circuit Court Judge Cindy Scott on Thursday after more than a year of legal back-and-forth involving the Monongalia County Board of Education, the city of Morgantown and the Suncrest Neighborhood Association.
The BOE will have 30 days to appeal the ruling once officially filed.
The issue dates back to the property’s 1925 deed, wherein the Monongahela Development Company (later Suncrest Homes, now defunct) conveyed the parcel to a predecessor of the BOE (the Morgan District Board of Education), “to be used for the purpose of a school building for instructing therein children of legal age who live in Morgan District, and who live in proximity to the said property.”
In accordance with the deed, the BOE constructed the Suncrest Primary School, which was established in the 1930s. Later additions, constructed in the 1950s, and again in the 1990s, grew the school to keep pace with the surrounding neighborhood.
But the school eventually outgrew the available land, and when Suncrest Primary students returned from their 2016 Christmas break, they reported to the brand-new, 70,000-square-foot Suncrest Elementary School, located across from the National Energy Technology Laboratory, on Collins Ferry Road.
A subsequent plan to use the Suncrest Primary building as a Division of Juvenile Services Youth Report Center was eventually dropped after stiff opposition from representatives of the neighborhood, citing the language of the original deed.
According to the 1925 document, the BOE was to have the Junior Avenue property as long as the land was used for a neighborhood school. However, the deed further states that if the BOE stopped using the land for that purpose, and the Monongahela Development Company was no longer in existence, “then the land shall be forever vested in trustees appointed by the court, to be used as a public park for the benefit of the public.”
In December 2023, almost exactly six years after the new Suncrest Elementary opened its doors, the old Suncrest Primary building was razed.
In January 2024, the BOE moved to acquire the property, petitioning the court for declaratory judgment and condemnation of the land through eminent domain, arguing that it had not permanently abandoned the lot for school purposes and had long-term plans that would bring it back in line with the stipulations spelled out in the deed.
The Suncrest Neighborhood Association objected, filing a motion for summary judgment in denial of eminent domain proceedings. A short time later, the city of Morgantown joined the case as an intervenor, stating its position as a representative of the public interest as well as its claim to be appointed trustee to maintain a public park on the property.
Scott ultimately agreed with the neighborhood association.
In a July 11 ruling, the judge found that despite ample time, the BOE failed to produce evidence of any efforts to place a school building on the property for the purpose of instructing children.
On Thursday, Scott upheld that decision and ordered the title be vested in the city to operate the property as a public park.
Morgantown Mayor Danielle Trumble said a member of the community mowed and maintained the property throughout the summer, and that city crews were at the site within hours of the hearing to clear and salt the sidewalks.
As for future park use, Trumble, who also serves as president of the city’s Board of Parks and Recreation Commissioners, cautioned that the legal proceedings may not be over.
But preliminary conversations have taken place.
“If things stand as they are now, I think the future of it is likely to be a neighborhood playground, but we would certainly, as BOPARC, want to get neighborhood input and see what would be most useful and most desired by the folks who live around it,” she said.
The Suncrest Neighborhood Association has crowdsourced its legal fees throughout this effort. It’s anticipated the body will ask the court to order the BOE to cover those costs.
