By By JONATHAN CLAYBORNE
Staff Writer
A group working to restore the former Bath High School building will hold a fundraising auction at 7 p.m. Saturday.
The auction will benefit Bath High School Preservation, which is working to renovate the long-empty building with an eye on reopening it for public use.
The auction will take place on the grounds and in the multi-purpose room at Bath Elementary School. The doors will open at 5:30 p.m.
“That will enable early comers to look at everything that will be on display, donated by individuals, corporate (entities), businesses,” said Marti Buchanan, BHS’ publicity chairwoman.
This is the second year BHS has held the auction, according to Buchanan.
Admission is free, and attendees who wish to bid will be assigned numbers to hold up for the auctioneer to see, she said.
Hot dogs, beverages and barbecue sandwiches will be served for a small cost, Buchanan shared.
For more information about the auction, call 252-923-5061.
Last year, it was reported around 150 people attended the auction.
The bidders vied for approximately 250 items, said Buchanan and Claudia Alligood, BHS fundraising chairwoman.
“We have had some very nice donations for our auction, so we’ve got good things for people to come and bid on,” Alligood related.
The auction is important to the nonprofit BHS’ goal of raising $20,000 for a once-a-year payment to the Town of Bath.
The preservation group has acquired the former school from the town for $100,000, with installments of $20,000 to be paid every year for five years.
BHS has held three fundraisers this year, but is still short of its $20,000 yearly goal, said Alligood. She indicated Saturday’s auction is critical to hitting the money-generation target for 2010.
Among the donated items auctioned off last year were a cake, jewelry, antiques, a birdhouse, original art, rounds of golf, trips given by travel agents and two flat-screen TVs, said Buchanan.
“The bulk of it, in most cases, was brand new,” she said.
The auction will be held concurrent with BHS’ annual raffle, Buchanan pointed out.
This year’s raffle boasts 15 prizes, from football tickets to a portrait session with a professional photographer, she said.
The raffle tickets cost $100 each.
“They’ve always done quite well, but last year we were really surprised, mainly because of the economy,” Buchanan said of the raffle, now in its fourth year.
The old BHS structure is probably “one of the most historic buildings” in Bath, said Starlon Credle, a volunteer preservationist who will help stage the auction.
“It’s not just Bath, it’s a whole community of people who have graduated from that high school,” Credle commented. “The community has set out to save it and to rehabilitate it.”