OAKLAND TWP — The Butler School Board has agreed to sell Oakland Township Elementary School to Robert Oesterling for $200,000.

Oesterling, a Summit Township resident, is owner of Kingdom Vapor Wholesale in Clarion. The company supplies electronic cigarettes and vaping liquid to vape shops and other businesses.

The board will ratify the sales agreement for the property, which is located at 545 Chicora Road on about nine acres, at its next meeting and has petitioned for court approval. A hearing has been scheduled for 2 p.m. Aug. 18 before Judge S. Michael Yeager.

Oesterling had previously shown interest in buying one of the district's vacant schools. He placed a bid of $100,000 for either the Oakland or Clearfield Township school in 2015.

In an interview, Oesterling said that his business is expanding.

“We've been growing drastically over the past three or four years. We've increased our space three times up there and we're out of room to expand,” he said.

He said that once the sale is approved and is closed he hopes to be up and running in the building within six months. He plans to add five to seven new employees and have 10 to 15 total people working there. It would be a distribution warehouse only, meaning customers would not be regularly coming and going from the building.

Major renovations to the building will not be required, he said.

The board formerly had an agreement with Monty Edgar, who owns the Woodbine Oaks Trailer Park adjacent to the school, to sell the building for $363,000. That agreement was voided by the board last month, which used a clause giving it the option to cancel if the district had to spend more than $10,000 to address water issues on the property.

The school board had requested Edgar make a new offer to buy the building “as is,” and he offered $178,000, which the board declined, said district solicitor Tom King.

When it was being used as a school, the building had a state Department of Environmental Protection permit for its water, which comes from a well. However, the DEP permit lapsed after school was closed, King said.

To get a new permit, DEP would have required the school to install a costly reverse osmosis water filtration system that would remove certain materials from the water, King said.

“According to the well drillers, there are naturally occurring particulates, like clay, that's in the water,” he said.

Despite this, the building does have running water and has a couple of storage tanks that can be used to store water, he said.

Oesterling said that his business would not need a DEP permit and that he was aware of the water issues on the property.

Oakland Elementary was one of four elementary schools the district closed in 2015 and planned to sell.

Clearfield Township Elementary School and Meridian Elementary School have been sold.

Broad Street Elementary School in Butler has not been sold and is currently being used as a temporary replacement for Summit Township Elementary, while officials deal with the water problems there.

The district's 2017-18 budget included an anticipated $725,000 in revenue from sale of its two vacant school buildings.

Before the water issues were known, the board hired two appraisers to appraise its vacant schools in 2015.

Based on those reports, they valued Oakland school at $362,500.