The former St. Peter Chanel High School building, located on Northfield Road in Bedford, will be demolished Wednesday, according to the Cuyahoga County Land Bank.
The Catholic high school, which opened in 1957 as a school for boys, closed in 2013 due to low enrollment. Demolition of the 133,000 square-foot building will be the Land Bank’s largest demo project to date.
In a statement, Bedford Superintendent Andrea Celico said that the the school district purchased the property in 2018 (for $1.4 million) with the idea of developing an education campus there.
“[The strategic planning team] recognized the potential for a campus-like setting as it is in such close proximity to Bedford High School,” she said.
There was much discussion, and even controversy, about what to do with the vacant building — sell, renovate, demolish — but Celico told the Plain Dealer’s Patrick O’Donnell last year that renovating Chanel for the District’s own use wasn’t practical. As Bedford has experienced declining enrollment itself, it plans to consolidate its six schools into four.
PD Photographer Gus Chan captured the vacant Chanel in a photo gallery last year.
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This article appears in Jul 15-21, 2020.
