Cortland Elementary building, vacant for 10 years, donated back to town

CORTLAND – The Town of Cortland recently acquired the old Cortland Elementary School and its property, vacant for a decade, in a donation from its former property owner, said Cortland mayor Mark Pietrowski.

Destan Aliu purchased the Cortland Elementary School – as well as Malta Elementary School, indicating plans to turn at least one building into a banquet center – for $82,500 in an auction in 2012. The Cortland school building, however, has laid dormant since.

Pietrowski said he approached Aliu when he first became mayor in 2021 about the potential of selling, or donating the property – an option Pietrowski vastly preferred – back to Cortland.

That effort came to fruition when Pietrowski announced the school had been donated to the town’s government on Sept. 30.

“We’re at the very beginning stages but now that we’ve got ownership of it we’ve been able to board up and secure the building,” Pietrowski said. “And now we’ll kind of look ahead and inspect the building and see what we can do moving forward.”

Recently, some teenagers wanted to explore the roof of the old school, and crews from the Cortland Fire Department came out to help get them off the roof, Pietrowski said.

“But it was one of those things where I had known by hearing from different neighbors and stuff that really they just wanted to know, you know, what, if anything could be done with that property just because people would try to explore or go in there or different things like that,” Pietrowski said.

Trees and an antenna which provided access to the defunct school’s roof have already been cut and windows into the building have been boarded up, according to a Facebook post made by Pietrowski’s office.

“So securing that property was a major focus of ours, but in order to do that we had to somehow gain control of that since it was privately owned and we couldn’t force the owner to do anything like that,” Pietrowski said. “So our main kind of push to get this done and to do this was to secure the building, to board up windows, take down any roof access, all that kind of stuff so it’s a secure building.”

What will be come of the old school is still anyone’s guess. Pietrowski said potential uses for the facility will be floated once the town’s government has a firmer grip on the building.

“And I know members of the community are already starting to make suggestions as well and try to have us look at different options,” Pietrowski said.