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What is happening at Delaware Valley?

No one seems to really know

Fred Stabbert III
Posted 6/6/23

CALLICOON – For nearly six decades, Delaware Valley Central School has sat on a hill, overlooking the Delaware River, graduating thousands of students from its K-12 grade schoolhouse.

The …

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What is happening at Delaware Valley?

No one seems to really know

Posted

CALLICOON – For nearly six decades, Delaware Valley Central School has sat on a hill, overlooking the Delaware River, graduating thousands of students from its K-12 grade schoolhouse.

The school building is located on Route 97, approximately three miles north of Callicoon and two miles south of Hankins.

Following the tri-school merger in 1999, Delaware Valley was modernized and upgraded and just had elementary students.

As the merger progressed and the Sullivan West High School was built in Lake Huntington, both Delaware Valley and Narrowsburg schools were shuttered in 2005 and put on the auction block.

Jeffersonville-Youngsville – the third school in the merger – was tranformed into the elementary school for the district.

The Narrowsburg School was sold to the Weiden family, who have tranformed the building into a business incubator and town center, called the Narrowsburg Union. 

Shops, office space, art exhibits and many other functions are held at the former school, which is located in the center of Narrowsburg.

The Delaware Valley Central School was eventually sold to Emily Yu in September 2013 for $1.16 million. 

The 100,000-square-foot building sits on 67 acres and it was Yu’s intention to expand the Windsor School to the Callicoon Campus. 

The Windsor School, located in New York City, offers college prep curriculum for foreign-born and domestic students in grades 7-12. International pupils (primarily Asian and Spanish) are also taught English and can earn  U.S. diplomas, in anticipation of attending American Universities.

It was originally Yu’s plan to erect dormitories to house 200 or more students but unfortunately the plan never came to fruition.

According to Sullivan County records, Yu sold the building in 2017 for $2.8 million to Sansui Trading Co, LTD, who then transferred the property later that year to New York Art Valley, Inc.

Then in July of last year the property was sold for $1.7 million to the U.S. National Career Training Center, Inc., which claims its offices at 40 Wall Street, New York City.

Town of Fremont Supervisor Brian Brustman, when asked what was happening at the property, said, “I have no idea. I say that because I have heard a lot of things and a group came in a while back… but they seem to have disappeared.”

Town of Fremont Building Inspector Jim McElroy has had minimal contact with the new owners but did confirm it was owned by a new company.

He said at one time there were Chinese people living in the building and they spoke Mandarin.

“Everything has come to a halt,” he said. “We haven’t heard from them in a while.

“The building has been abandoned for a long time and we are waiting to see what happens,” McElroy said. “The planning board has been in contact.”

A former spokesperson for the company, who was hired to help facilitate conversations with outside contractors and government agencies said, “I’m not sure what is happening there. The company is out of budget – that’s why I left.

“I helped work with NYSEG and other companies but I’m not quite sure what is happening,” she said. “I was only helping to translate. I think they left everything there [at the DV school].”

Late last month, an electric truck was at the school working on a pole. 

The campus now includes a small white camper in front of the former bus garage and some tools lay out in the parking lot. 

Several windows in the sprawling building were either open or broken and the grass on both the athletic fields and throughout the entrance was nearly a foot high.

A person was in the building recently but was not interviewed.

Attempts to contact the new owners, the U.S. National Career Training Center, Inc., through email and phone were unsuccessful.

The company’s website lists this as one of their addresses,  10497 Rte 97, Fremont, NY 12736.

The website goes on to say,  “In order to help all unemployed people in the world realize their dream of employment and entrepreneurship, create wealth for individuals, increase taxes for the country, reduce unemployed people for the society and promote social stability, the national vocational and technical training center and the national employment placement center of the United States jointly recruit unemployed people from all over the world: jointly hold the “mass entrepreneurship. Thousands of people innovate “new employment, entrepreneurship and innovative economic model! 

“Our business and employment industry: mainly in agriculture: planting all kinds of vegetables and green feed for breeding animals, such as wheat seedlings, breeding pigs, sheep, chickens, fish, shrimp, etc. all kinds of waste metals can be processed into different metal powders, and then processed into different metal materials and products. 

“All kinds of waste trees, agricultural straw, weeds, etc. can be processed into biomass. Biomass can be made into mixed gas through a special gasifier and then converted into electricity and hydrogen. Hydrogen can be made into various non-ferrous metals such as iron, aluminum, steel and copper through chemical reduction reaction.”

If the group comes before the Fremont Planning Board more information may be forthcoming, but for now, the once grand school is in need of repair and waiting for a new mission to call its own.

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