District seeks heirs of Bailey Hill school donors.

Byline: Anne Williams The Register-Guard

Eugene School District officials know only this about Matthew and Emmaline Wallis: They gave a small parcel of land to then-School District No. 4 in 1889, and they bore 11 children.

More than 100 years later, the district's law firm is trying to track down their heirs, seeking release from a deed restriction calling for the parcel - sandwiched between two other parcels that make up the Bailey Hill Elementary School property - to remain "a site for a school house" or revert back to family ownership.

The task has taken a year already, and still four known heirs remain unaccounted for, said attorney Joe Richards, whose firm, Luvas Cobb, worked with a Portland genealogy expert.

The school board will hear a report tonight on the search and the proposed process for negotiating a way out of the restriction.

Bailey Hill, in southwest Eugene, closed after the 2000-01 school year due to declining enrollment, budget cuts and excess capacity districtwide. In 2002, the school board designated the property "surplus," with the intention of eventually selling it.

There are no immediate plans to do so, said Jon Lauch, assistant director of facilities. The building currently houses the NATIVES Indian education program and the Bailey Hill Instructional Center, a program for students who have been expelled. The district also regularly uses classroom space for staff training.

While there's no space for those programs elsewhere in the district, that could change after the district completes an ongoing strategic planning process that will assess boundaries, enrollment trends and building capacity, Lauch said. With shrinking enrollment expected for the foreseeable future, more closures are likely.

While it may be two years before those decisions come, the district decided to go ahead and try to resolve the deed issue. In fact, Lauch said, a real estate analyst did some of the legwork four years ago.

"They did quite a bit of work and dredged up birth records and death certificates, obituaries, all that kind of information," he said. "But there were a number of dead-ends that were not addressed. We looked at that and thought, `Gee, how are we ever going to clear this matter up?' '

The project was shelved for a couple of years while the district dealt with other property matters, including the sale of Whiteaker Elementary School and marketing of Santa Clara Elementary School (which, incidentally, had a similar deed restriction that was waived by the Santa Clara Grange).

Richards' firm has been tracking down heirs in two known lines, and a third line is possible. A letter he's drafted to be sent to descendents names 25 direct and next-in-line heirs, and surmises there may be additional heirs from a third line.

With board approval tonight, the district proposes offering $40,000, to be divvied up among the heirs. A market evaluation pegged the value of the less-than-one-acre parcel at $150,000, assuming it were vacant and could be used for low density residential development - considered the most lucrative use. But the costs associated with demolition would bring the net total down to an estimated $40,000.

"It's not that we're proposing to demolish the building," Lauch said. "That's just the mechanism for arriving at the value. The approach is to offer what we believe to be a fair market settlement in exchange for the deed restriction waiver."

Based on a handful of conversations with heirs already, Richards said he doesn't believe they had any clue about the deed restriction.

"I believe it will be news to just about everybody," he said.

Should the heirs sign off, the district will seek a court declaration that would close out the interest of any additional heirs that might come forward later, he said.

District officials Tuesday weren't able to give an estimate of what's been spent on the search, as the work has been included in the monthly retainer to Luvas Cobb. Richards said he believes the genealogy expert was paid between $1,000 and $2,000.