Sad Ending for What Was Once Historic Claflin School

Of Claflin school, the Georgia Trust reports "In 1868 a schoolhouse was built in downtown Columbus to educate the African American community following the Civil War. This school eventually became part of the Muscogee County public school system and its campus was expanded in 1921, when a larger masonry building was added. The Claflin School campus was expanded again in the 1940s with the construction of a brick equalization school. The original 1868 structure was destroyed by fire in 1958, but two buildings from the first half of the 20th century remain. In 2005 the Muscogee County School District moved their operations to a new building, boarding up Claflin’s windows and leaving the buildings vacant. The campus fell victim to vandalism, theft and deterioration. In 2014 the city of Columbus took ownership of the buildings, which require significant and costly rehabilitation."

Sometime in 2018, Claflin received some measure of rehabilitation, opening up to incoming residents as an apartment complex to a building that was once the biggest blight in the downtown area of Columbus.

The building, with deed records showing it is still owned by The Consolidated Government of Columbus and Friends of Historic Claflin, Inc., was visited only a few weeks ago by a man by the name of Mark Wright of Oracle Design Group, who stated to some residents that he "owned" the Claflin building. But the arrogant half-announcement of this newly-stated verbal ownership was met by current residents with plenty of chagrin.

Records show that Oracle Design Group is headquartered in Louisville, Ky. Its employees are listed as Mark Wright, President; Caryn Winter, Architect and Owner; and Jarrod Burgess, Director of Finance.

Notwithstanding the burdensome shack-like superficial makeover is a marked disappointment to Columbus' most well-known historians, but also along with that is the fact that the building was taken from its earned historical place and shoved into the back of a 'book of bad properties' after the deed restriction was removed. Either it was sold or sold out, and Mr. Wright's presence likely let a bagged cat out when he declared himself the owner of something that shouldn't have been used for private profiteering from the very start.

For more than a year, many of the inbound residents of the old resurrected-from-the-dead Claflin building have been looking for a place to report the many on-going issues with the building, many of which seem to be the result of covering up and painting over a crumbling infrastructure that doesn't appear to be environmentally sound.

Residents of the old dilapidated building were only too glad to talk about it, but only one would give her name...Mrs. Christine Sumbry.

A few weeks ago, city officials, Congressman Sanford Bishop and several others, including Mayor Skip Henderson, were contacted by Fountain City News about the "back" building's issues, which ranged from nails popping out of floors (which we hear was recently remedied after the resident waited more than a year for it to be fixed) to cracked ceilings with rainwater streaming down from outside ruining everything from furniture and fixtures to electrical failures that caused a fuse box fire, forcing one resident to have to move to a hotel temporarily while the building's sometimes-maintenance people, according to her, "blamed her children for the fuse box failure."

She said "I don't know how they would try to blame my kids when they were in here taking photos of the fuse box shortly before it caught fire, and if you go outside, you can see where the electrical fire likely actually started out there and made it's way in here."

The same resident was not able to use her kitchen lighting and had to "cook by lampstand" because the overhead light no longer worked. Fountain City News has yet to hear whether or not her situation was remedied.

The resident who was willing to give her name was experiencing rainwater leaking down from the ceiling to the floor in a room where she had to move her belongings and stack them out of the way to keep them from getting wet. She says she had only lived there three months when the issue started and was never repaired more than a year later. At the time of this report, she was experiencing another "newer" ceiling failure where rainwater poured out of her ceiling and down to her countertops where she kept her electronic kitchen appliances.

The other female resident with nails constantly popping out of her floorboards also said the floors were leaning to one side, which caused her new furniture to slide to one side of the room, but she was told by "owner" Wright to use cardboard like 'they did back in the old days' to balance out the furniture so it wouldn't move.

The residential manager, whom they know only as Jasper Washington, a former manager of a housing project in Columbus, was present...but not available to speak. Residents say that when the old site manager left, they were without anyone in the office for a long period of time.

They state that when Mr. Washington appeared, rather than introduce himself and find out what needed to be done, he chose to simply send out a demanding letter telling the residents what they were and were not "allowed" to do. Without that letter, they never would have known the place even had a new leasing manager.

The people who handle the utilities are not local to Columbus, so no one seems to know who does what or who they need to turn to -because there is one company listed on their monthly invoices, but the money they pay goes to another company called -simply enough- "Claflin."

Recently, one resident also experienced rainwater running down from the ceiling in the hallway in front of her 1300-square foot apartment which ruined one of the chairs she had resting in the hallway. Residents who have entire breezeways to themselves tend to gladly decorate their outside areas as "Patios" or places for people to sit when they come through, which they say should not disturb others because no one else is living on that end of the hallway and no one else should be on that end without an invitation.

Another resident who was not available at the time is known to have had her dryer drop entirely through the floor when it collapsed beneath her.

The windows in the back apartments are sealed shut and residents have only one way out - their front doors. If a major fire were to occur, they cannot get out of the windows to the old dilapidated fire escapes that were once put there for the old school and they have no back doors whatsoever to get out of. If they can't get out of the front doors, they would be entirely trapped.

Only a couple of smaller matters seem to have been taken care of in the two weeks since we visited.

Last we heard, Mayor "Skip" Henderson had sent over the City Inspector to gather up reports of major repairs that needed to be done, but there is no word as to whether or not American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds (Columbus has received just under $78M...of which about half has already been disbursed) will be used to shore up the infrastructure issues of the old building in the back or if it will nonchalantly be allowed to continue to crumble until someone is gravely injured, attacked [with its easy access to homeless people and vagrants], or made severely ill because of the increased mold and mildew issues underneath sinks.

Some issues could be abated with proper repairs, but the residents -one of whom is a FEMA resident sent in from Dallas Texas from ravaging hurricanes - have been waiting for them for over a year and said they don't seem to be forthcoming any time soon.

To make matters even worse, resident horror stories about being strong-armed out of additional funds for rent in spite of what is on their leases -which is illegal in the State of Georgia - to getting bad invoices that show many of them haven't paid rent since this past April (an obvious system failure on the part of the billing company-also not local to Columbus) are an on-going matter that also has not been resolved.

Residents have stated that they were used by leasing management for everything from "recruiting" new resident so the building's owners could quickly get 'tax credits' to being held responsible for cleaning the exterior areas and making their own repairs to the common areas around the outside of their apartments. 

Inadequate dumpster facilities to accommodate 44 residents exists, the fitness center in the brochures they saw never materialized, and the only on-site laundry area consists of two washers and two dryers. Some residents can fit in their own total electric laundry appliances...if they are stackable.

Because of the underwhelming sloppy makeover, the historic building's integrity has been sorely compromised and its promise for education has been compromised. 

The ghostly ghastly shadows of a post-Radical Reconstruction relic is a mere shell of what was once a proud stanchion in the local Black community.