The potential owner of the closed Brunner Elementary building plans to turn the site into a business hub and rental hall.

Gary Moritz, of Curtice, attended Monday night’s Genoa Planning Commission Committee meeting to discuss his offer to buy the building from the Genoa School District, schools superintendent. Dennis Mock said. The deal hinges on rezoning the site from the R-1 classification to B-1, which is more suitable for light business.

The district closed Brunner Elementary and Allen Central Elementary at the end of the 2010-11 school year. The students will start this school year in the new elementary building on the main campus on Genoa-Clay Center Road where the middle school and high school are also located.

Allen Central is being demolished because of the structural problems with the building.  However, a Brunner sale remained a possibility for most of the year, Mock said.

Moritz, who is the chief executive officer of Sun Federal Credit Union on Woodville Road, has offered to buy the Brunner building for $50,000, Mock said.

The deal includes the one-story building of 35,140 square feet on West Street along with slightly more than seven acres. The other eight acres surrounding the building has been sold to the Village of Genoa for $1 and it will be maintained as a park.

Moritz’s plan has a variety of uses for the building, which was named after John T. Brunner, a former principal.

“His family is into physical fitness. I believe his wife is a personal trainer and they would like to use the gym for something related,” Mock said. “They also plan to use the cafeteria to rent to the community for reunions, showers and other events.”

The goal is to potentially lease space to area businesses, Mock explained.

Moritz also told the planning committee he would like to keep the Brunner name somehow incorporated to the business complex name, the superintendent said.

Moritz has a long history with the school system. He attended Genoa schools as a child; served as a Genoa Board of Education member in the 1990s, and has children who also were students in the school district.

The planning commission committee members voted 4-0 in favor on the request to rezone the property as a precursor to the sale, Mock said.

The village now has to advertise the rezoning request for 30 days. In the 15 days following that, Genoa Village Council will meet to conduct the final vote.

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