At the end of January, a meeting of the Bolesławiec County Council committee devoted to county education was held. (We wrote about it in the article Kwaśniewski: In December I knew there would be no closure of “Budowlanka”). During the meeting, the head of the county Dariusz Kwaśniewski presented two options for resolving the issue of the special school’s headquarters that the County is considering. The first is to build a new school on Zwycięstwa, on the site of the aforementioned building, which until recently housed, among other institutions, the County Family Support Centre. “Modernizing this building is not worthwhile,” the county head emphasized at the time. “But this plot is three times larger than the special school’s plot, and a welcoming facility could be built there.”
The second option is to modernize and expand the current headquarters of PZSiPS on Zgorzelecka. “What will decide the matter?” Dariusz Kwaśniewski continued. “First, the total cost; second, the function; third—and this is very important—the amount of external funding that can be secured for each option.”
What will happen to the deteriorating building on Zwycięstwa if the county authorities choose the second option? We asked Radosław Palczewski, secretary of Bolesławiec County. “It will probably be sold together with the plot,” the official told “ii”. “We spoke with several people; none of them was interested in the building itself, but they were interested in the plot.”
The problem is that anyone wishing to use the building would have to incur enormous costs (estimated at between PLN 800,000 and as much as PLN 2 million). “All the installations and most of the windows would have to be replaced, and a patio would have to be built,” R. Palczewski explains. He emphasizes: “This property has its advantages. The thing is that nowadays there is rather a tendency to demolish such buildings and build new ones.”
The building’s advantages? Its interesting form and the fact that carcinogenic asbestos was not used in its construction. Its disadvantages? The property caused problems for county officials. There was a pattern: after heavy rain, a distinctive smell could be detected in the building, which absorbed water through its uninsulated foundations. The smell can still be detected in the archive, which was moved to the new building. (The paper became permeated with the odor.)
Interestingly, when this building was constructed—that is, during the Polish People’s Republic—it was considered downright avant-garde. Now it would probably be more accurate to say that it was built in the style typical of late Socialist Realism (a combination of glass, chrome, steel and concrete). “No one ever claimed it was an architectural gem,” Radosław Palczewski jokes.
We will return to this subject.