LAKE PLACID — Northwood School’s reconstruction of the former With Pipe and Book store at 2495 Main St. now includes demotion plans, though the school says they intend to maintain the iconic look of the historic building.

Northwood Assistant Head of School Thomas Broderick informed the North Elba-Lake Placid Joint Review Board of the school’s intentions in a letter last month. In the letter, Broderick said Northwood’s board of trustees authorized the school in late January to “go forward with plans to demolish and then replicate the former With Pipe and Book property.

“Northwood School has done its due diligence to ascertain that demolition is the best path for transforming the Northwood on Main property into the showcase of innovation and entrepreneurship that the community expects,” Broderick wrote to the board in the Feb. 13 letter.

Broderick added that the school conducted a structural engineering analysis of the building, which he said determined its capacity to handle a seismic event was inadequate, necessitating the demolition.

“The seismic realities in our region required additional internal bracing that drove the cost of the project higher and to a point where building a new structure became feasible,” Broderick wrote. “The fact that the internal bracing would not prevent the (concrete masonry units) from shearing from the building during a seismic event was an additional consideration.

Broderick goes on to say that the school intends to acquire the necessary permits and approvals to replicate the design the Joint Review Board approved in the fall. Multiple phone messages for Broderick left at the school by the Enterprise last week went unreturned.

At the end of their March 1 meeting, the Joint Review Board reviewed Broderick’s letter. Chairman Bill Hurley said the school needed a demolition permit from the board, due to its designation as a historic structure. He added that the school has had discussions with the town about the project and that the village water line that travels through the property may need to be moved.

“(It has to follow the building code) guidelines of a commercial building on Main Street,” Hurley said at the meeting. “It’s gotta look like a store down below it.

“I pointed out particularly the cornice (decorative molding) and all the architectural details,” he added, “and they said they were pretty much going to do this.”

Hurley also said that some of the board’s requests to maintain the historic aesthetic elements of the Main Street exterior of the building were not mandatory, though the school told him they intended to comply with their wishes.

“Before they were making the old building work for their plan,” Hurley said. “Now, they are going to make their plan.”

The plan for the building the school presented to the Joint Review Board last fall included educational studios for robotics, filmmaking, TED talk presentations, entrepreneurship and design.

At a fall review board meeting, Northwood Head of School Michael Maher said the use of the building would cover “a broad spectrum of disciplines that all foster innovation and creativity.”

Northwood is a private boarding school with roughly 165 students located on Northwood Road, on the opposite side of Mirror Lake from the former bookstore.

The former With Pipe and Book is one of two buildings Northwood purchased in late 2015 for more than $2 million. The other is the old Lake Placid Club Balsams Cottage on Norsnol Road, which the school plans to use for student housing, though the approval process is also currently under review by the board.

In September, Massachusetts-based OMR Architects outlined plans for the building to the review board. School officials had initially planned to include faculty housing in the building.

The school conducted previous interior demolition work at the site last year. In a late December guest commentary in the Enterprise, Broderick claimed that last year the school broke a fundraising record, raising more $840,000 in annual giving, adding that nearly $2 million had been raised for the Northwood School on Main project.

“The multi-million-dollar academic center for innovation and entrepreneurship will provide educational opportunities for local students and visitors alike,” Broderick wrote in the guest commentary. “Academic programming in robotics, coding and innovation will bring 21st-century learning opportunities to the entire community.”