Riverview Heating and Plumbing Inc. held a grand opening Wednesday afternoon for its new headquarters and office building at the site of the old Gretna Middle School.

“I’m just real pleased with it,” said Ann Marie Shelton, who worked as a secretary at the middle school for 30 years. “It doesn’t look like the same place.”

Pittsylvania County Public Schools closed down the old Gretna Middle School - which served as the county’s Northside High School from 1949 to 1969 - when they opened its new building in 2003.

“At one time, this was the largest school in the county,” said Riverview owner Tim Pruitt, adding the building, located at 203 Northside Drive, sat vacant for almost three years before he bought it in December 2005.  

 Pruitt demolished about 80,000 square feet of the building and houses most of his offices in the school’s administrative wing, and its old kindergarten and first-grade wing.

He has converted the building’s gym into a sheet metal shop, where six to eight people are responsible for fabricating the ductwork needed for Riverview’s installation jobs. Pruitt said he has turned the school’s old industrial arts building into his maintenance shop and plans to house a future service department in the school’s agriculture shop.

Since he did most of the building’s work in house, Pruitt said it only cost him $300,000 to renovate the structure. He said Pittsylvania County paid almost $200,000 toward the cost of demolishing parts of the building that he did not need for his business.

“That’s about what they estimated tearing the whole building down would cost,” Pruitt said, adding county officials thought it would cost $500,000 to raze the structure.

After Gretna residents approached county officials with complaints about possible vagrants living in the building, the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors considered tearing the school down, but the board defeated the plan with a tie vote at its May 3, 2005, meeting.

 Pruitt told county officials about his plans to purchase the building shortly after this vote. He received permission from the Gretna Town Council to move forward with his plans in December 2005 and started renovating the building in March.

Riverview has hired 40 people since December and now has a total staff of 130 employees. Pruitt said he chose to move his business from Hurt to the old Gretna Middle School site because his business is doing more work in Danville and the southern end of the county.

Riverview is handling the HVAC and plumbing work for Danville Regional Medical Center’s plans to expand the hospital’s top two floors. Pruitt said his business’ other recent projects involve work on E.A. Gibson Middle School, Roman Eagle Memorial Home and the Bridge Street condominium complex.

“Everybody around here has been nice,” Pruitt said, adding residents of the neighborhood surrounding his building have embraced the idea of a new business coming to their area. “They’ve been real glad to see something on the other side of the tracks.”

(Article from the Danville Register and Bee - by Mac McLean)