Wayne school board quietly sells land it owned for 50 years to group of investors

WAYNE — A swath of undisturbed land off Valley Road has been returned to private ownership for the first time in more than 50 years after the Board of Education agreed to sell it to a group of investors.

Trustees at their most recent meeting endorsed the sale of the 9.9-acre property for $1 million, or $4,900 less than its assessed value.

To passing motorists and pedestrians, the overgrown site may appear like nothing more than a clump of trees.

But in December 1971, when township voters approved a $300,000 referendum to acquire the property, it represented the future of the K-12 district . According to a newspaper article published at the time, officials intended to build an elementary school there to “ease the burden” on Randall Carter School, which was bracing for a new housing subdivision off French Hill Road.

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“Yesterday’s action at the polls appeared to instill a confidence in the township’s educational system to proceed with plans to upgrade the elementary schools,” the article said.

Officials did not respond to an inquiry Tuesday about the pending sale.

There was no discussion about it at the meeting, but a resolution passed by trustees states that the site is “no longer needed for school purposes.”

It was not clear this week what the purchasers plan to do with the property, which is zoned for single-family homes. They are identified in the resolution as Bharat Kanani, Jenish Kanani and Akash Sheladia.

The site, known as the Schinman tract after the late Pauline and Edward Schinman, a wealthy couple who once owned it, is on the west side of Valley Road — about 600 feet south of Judith Place.

Construction of a school never occurred there because by the end of the 1970s, the township population dropped by 5.4% — from 49,141 to 46,474. And the number of residents still did not rebound by 1990, when census takers counted 47,025.

So rather than open a new school, the district began to close some of the ones it had.

Mountain View School shut down at the end of the 1975 school year, followed by Preakness School a year later. No more than a decade went by before officials shuttered James Fallon School — it reopened in September 2000 — and the original Anthony Wayne Middle School, which is now a part of a housing complex for senior citizens.

The school board resolution states the district tried to sell the Schinman tract through a public sale, but that no one bid on it.

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State law allows the district to sell property through negotiations with any interested party if no one places a bid at such a sale.

Trustees initially authorized the real estate transaction in March 2022. A resolution passed at the time states that proceeds from the sale would be deposited in a capital reserve for facility projects.

Philip DeVencentis is a local reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.

Email: devencentis@northjersey.com

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Wayne school board quietly sells land it owned for 50 years to group of investors