While dozens of alumni of Butler Middle School reminisced about their time in the building on Thursday, Feb. 27, there is still a chance that they enter the building once again now that it is being sold.

Butler Area School District hosted a tour of the building on East North Street in Butler as a type of last hurrah for the school before it is sold. On Thursday, March 6, the school will be sold to one of a few bidders at a public hearing.

The school closed at the end of the 2021-22 school year, and although potential buyers have floated plans for the building since then, it is only now that it has four purchase offers that will decide the former school’s fate.

Although Butler school district administrators have been quiet about the buyers and their plans for the 180,000-square-foot facility, the initial offer came from Pittsburgh Gateways, which was in discussions to use the building as a community development hub.

Brian White, superintendent of Butler Area School District, also said he did not want the building to be a blighted piece of property, nor did he want it to go to a buyer who would do nothing with it.

With White’s vision in mind, we may be able to expect the building to have some community utility once it is purchased.

We will find out March 6, when the potential buyers of the building will have to provide answers to a judge about their plans for the building and the economic viability of doing what they want with it.

In the end, the alumni of the school, whether they were there when it was a junior high school or a middle school, may not have had their last steps in the building Thursday evening. They may be back in the building a few years down the line, once it is turned into something useful for the community once again. Then, the memories can flood back every time we enter the facility.

— ET