Sanford Center in Moundsville Locked Up Pending Demolition
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MOUNDSVILLE -- Debris crunched underfoot as eerie murmurs could be heard echoing off the filthy walls of the Sanford Center on its last day before being locked up and slated for demolition. Crumbling ceilings, warped floorboards, and uncomfortably soft flooring marked the rooms, while ancient bags of fast food and scraps of mail indicated that some rooms hadn't seen use since 2019.
The ghostly murmurs, as it turns out, belonged to Moundsville's building inspectors and the crews on site inspecting the Sanford Center just before the building was padlocked Friday, at the end of a 30-day notice that Moundsville was terminating the lease with the center's board of directors. At a March meeting of the city council, the city unanimously agreed to retain control of the land while terminating the lease.
Some of the rooms still contained the belongings of their most recent tenants. One room, with a sign calling it the "Bounce House Hall," contains exactly what it says -- a large, deflated nylon structure and a small basketball hoop. Another room, which was unlabeled but presumably -- hopefully -- belonged to one of a couple paranormal-themed businesses which used the building, housed creepy clown-shaped decorations strewn across the room. The kitchen's dry-erase calendar still bore a September 2020 date, with the last day marked off being Sept. 22
Some parts of the building's former life as Sanford Elementary also remain, with a gymnasium converted to a general purpose room, now with the hardwood floors peeling back and kiddie pools, still inflated, to catch rainwater dripping through the rotten ceiling.
The door to the old principal's office was locked, but through the windows it was easy to see that the plaster ceiling was crumbling to pieces, coating the floor in debris. Many drop ceilings did just that, dropping to the floor and breaking apart where they fell.
The building on Cedar Avenue served as Sanford Elementary until the late 2000s, eventually finding new life as the Sanford Center, serving as a "business incubator" for up-and-coming businesses to lease space and get their feet wet. City Manager Rick Healy said the city received complaints about the state of the building last summer, eventually leading to city leaders touring the building and contracting a mold inspection company to scope the site, which produced "ghastly" results, Healy said previously.
Council agreed to terminate the lease to the board, and as of Thursday, utility services to the building had been officially overtaken by the city, and will presumably be disconnected at some point in the future. During Friday's walkthrough, electricity was still provided to the building.