Quincy School Board finalizes deal to buy K&L Arena for $2 million

QUINCY — The Quincy School Board voted unanimously to purchase the 50,000 square foot K&L Arena for $2 million at Wednesday night’s board meeting.

With the final inspection of the building and an environmental review of the site completed, the sale will close on Thursday.

The School District will now spend the next year and approximately another $1 million to convert the former indoor sports complex into the district’s transportation headquarters, or more commonly known as “The Bus Barn”. The 18-year-old building is on about 5 acres of land at 1600 N. 43rd and former owners Greg and Debbie Shierling never re-opened the facility for sports after the 2020 Pandemic.

The coming renovations will include overhead doors, wash bays and a fuel depot, which will replace existing fuel depot at Flinn Stadium and the entire 85 bus fleet will be consolidated at K&L.

The move was also necessitated after increasing public complaints and a formal complaint filed with the state regarding excessive noise coming from the bus fleet, and the Illinois EPA informed the School District it was looking into the issue.

The purchase will removes about $30,000 in property tax revenue from local taxing bodies.

QPS has $1.6 million to put toward the project it has from selling its old school buildings and some of the contents within them. That also includes rebates and cash left over the school construction projects paid for by the 2014 bonding referendum. Chief of Business Operations Ryan Whicker said the remaining needed funding would come from the transportation and operations funds.

The Board also approved a program for Quincy High School and the Quincy Area Vocational Technical School to offer EMT courses.

Webb bids adieu

The formal points of the School Board meeting took about 20 minutes. Most of the meeting was dedicated to people who wanted to congratulate retiring Superintendent Roy Webb, whose last day is June 30, and this was Webb’s final School Board meeting in leading the district.

Webb also took time to recognize several retiring or departing administrators and he announced Brenda Fleer will be the next principal of Quincy Junior High School. Fleer, a vice principal at QJHS who has been with the district for 25 years, replaces Dan Sparrow, who left to become the athletic director and dean of students at Liberty High School. Sparrow had been principal at QJHS for the last decade.