Moderalli Excavating Inc. of Poland demolishes the former Elm Road School in Warren on Tuesday. Charles Morjock is operating the excavator as Lenny Lewis, right, hoses down the dust. Both work for Moderalli.

WARREN — Demolition has begun on the old Elm Road School building despite some protest.

Matt Martin, executive director of Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership, which is handling the demolition on behalf of the city of Warren, said the demolition is progressing according to its planned timeline.

The school building, located at 361 Elm Road NE, is being demolished by Moderalli Excavating Incorporated of Poland. Crew members said the project is expected to continue throughout the week.

The school opened on April 12, 1885, and was decommissioned in 1989, according to archives of the Warren-Trumbull County Public Library.

“It’s privately owned, and it’s being conducted as a nuisance abatement,” Martin said. “It’s a property that has been vacant, derelict and abandoned in the city of Warren for, to my knowledge, years.”

Martin said the school building has been stripped of all metal and vandalized to the point where it cannot be revitalized.

Martin said the property is privately owned by Princeton Commercial Holdings LLC. According to the company website, it is based in Wilmington, Delaware.

Attempts to contact the company for comment were unsuccessful.

“We secured that building over the summer,” Martin said. “We tried to go inside it to see if we could even do a full assessment of it, but it wasn’t even stable throughout much of the building. We did get in some of it, it’s thoroughly vandalized. It’s really sad what’s happened to the property.”

Trumbull Neighborhood Partnership and the Trumbull County land bank have received some pushback regarding the demolition.

Nicholas Kafantaris of Kafantaris Properties Inc. is attempting to have a legal injunction put in place to stop immediately the demolition of the Elm Road School. In an email, Kafantaris said he has been pleading with the land bank to “stave off” demolition of the building.

Kafantaris claims the demolition is being conducted illegally. He believes the demolition violates a codified city ordinance that would require the Warren Redevelopment and Planning Corporation (WRAP) / Design review board to “afford the city, interested persons, or organizations, the opportunity to acquire or to arrange for the preservation of such building.”

When approached by Kafantaris regarding the legal concern, Martin said the appropriate measures have been taken.

“We had to (receive) a state-approved waiver from the State Historic Preservation Office in order for us to utilize the grant dollars that we have for this demolition,” Martin said. “It requires an application process — we defer those to our municipal partners – so the city of Warren completed that process and the waiver was awarded.”

Martin said one contingency of receiving a waiver from the historic preservation office was that a plaque be installed at the site after the demolition.

“To us, that was done and done,” Martin said. “The state of Ohio Historic Preservation Office ruled on the matter, and so as for any (other legal challenge), I’m not aware of anything. What I told (Kafantaris) is that we have a contract. We did everything to the letter of what we knew here in this office.”

Martin said the building has been vacant and available for years. Martin said he had not received any interest in the building until the demolition began.

“After the demolition it will obviously be a vacant piece of land,” Martin said. “The cost of the demolition will be assessed to the property card, which means it will manifest as tax debt. Generally speaking, what happens is it is unlikely that someone would pay that amount being that there is no building left. Then, it would go through a series of public sales.”