This June, students will flee their classrooms for summer vacation,
but they won’t be returning to five buildings owned by Seattle Public
Schools. The school board, citing an estimated $24 million budget
shortfall, voted January 29 to close the buildings.
Now, another question presses: What should be done with all these
big, empty buildings?
Nova High School, on 1.76 acres, must move out of the Horace Mann
Building—a 1901 structure in the Central District. T.T. Minor
Elementary will also be vacant next September. Located on 2.1 acres
atop a high ridge in the Central District, T.T. Minor has views of
mountain ranges in both directions and a stunning vantage of
downtown.
“Can you imagine how much T.T. Minor would go for as condos?” Jesse
Hagopian asks with dread. A teacher at Madison Middle School and a
cofounder of Educators, Students, and Parents for a Better Vision of
the Seattle Schools, Hagopian wants the school to stay
open—ideally as a school, but if not, then for community use.
“Empty buildings don’t help anybody,” says city council member Sally
Clark, chair of the council’s land-use committee. “It is bad for the
neighborhood in general because [empty buildings] would, I believe,
encourage graffiti and attract people who are looking to hang out next
to dark, empty buildings.”
But the school district currently lacks a plan. “Right now it is too
early to determine” what will happen to the buildings, Seattle Public
Schools spokesman David Tucker says.
Historically, the district has unloaded much of its surplus
property. In the 1980s, the school district sold the iconic former
Queen Anne High School for use as apartments, later turned into luxury
condos, to the chagrin of some neighboring residents. And in 2007, the
city council allocated $12 million to buy school properties, such as
the Allen Elementary School building, which sold for more than $3
million this past October and is now used as a community center by the
Phinney Neighborhood Association.
However, continuing to sell old buildings may not serve the
district’s long-term interests, Tucker says. “We have to have the land
and resources to meet the needs of future students.”
Indeed, according to a March 2008 enrollment-projection report by
the school district, the number of school-age kids in Central
Seattle—in the vicinity of two of the closed
buildings—could increase by 11 to 100 percent by 2012. The city’s
long-term plan calls for increasing density in the central city while
remaining welcoming for families.
Selling school buildings in a growing city is shortsighted. Leaving
schools vacant may attract crime. And maintaining vacant buildings
already costs the district $100,000 each year, according to a report in
the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. The school district should keep
the properties—and find tenants to occupy them until the district
needs them again as schools.
“I would love to see it turned into a community center. We need one
desperately,” Judith Edwards, a resident of Beacon Hill, says about Van
Asselt Elementary (2.5 acres), located a mile from her house and slated
to close. “I would love to see it turned into a place for performing
arts, a place for classes, and a place where community groups would
meet.” The neighborhood library has a meeting room, she says, but it
has a six-month waiting list.
Old buildings can be repurposed as performance venues, coffee shops,
community meeting spaces, and offices—not just bunkers for
wayward teens. Install Wi-Fi, rent rooms to church groups on Sundays,
and open the playfields to sports teams clamoring for the ball
fields.
Where community centers don’t make sense, the buildings could be
converted—not into expensive condos, but into low-income housing
or even workplaces. After sitting vacant for 20 years, the Colman
School building, near the I-90 lid, was converted into a mixed-use
building that includes 36 low-income apartments. Former schools “give
people the opportunity to live in neighborhoods where they have access
to services and grocery stores,” says Sarah Lewontin, executive
director of Housing Resources Group, which helped convert the building.
“Working people [need to] live where they can get to work.” 
Didn’t the University Heights center building (52nd and the Ave) get exactly the kind of treatment proposed … and isn’t it fabulously successful as home to driving ed classes, group music classes, preschool, the backdrop for the Udist Farmer’s Market and home to Broadway Bound Children’s Theatre?
Not bad for a 107 year old school building: FTW!
Declare these schools city landmarks, FFS. Totally the way to go!
It is not the school district’s job to provide community centers and neighborhood amenities. They need to focus on educating our children. As such I think they need to do whatever will get them top dollar for rents or purchase. If the City can buy them, great, but as long as we have huge classes and under-performing schools, let’s not loose sight of SPS’s singular focus.
Eric b- We do not teach children in a vacuum. Well-adjusted, happy and healthy students come from strong communities.
I teach in a high-poverty school and see everyday that the successful students are the students who have support outside of school. The reason many of them have support is because of local organizations, community centers and nonprofits that teach parenting classes, English classes, job training classes and more. They provide a safe place for kids to be after school. They give opportunities that are otherwise unheard of outside of privileged neighborhoods. And, perhaps most importantly, they are IN the community. It would be shameful to sell off SSD’s buildings to the highest bidder when the needs of the community, especially now, are so high.
I served on the Closure and Consolidation Committee that worked on the previous closures. The last two posts were pretty much what we heard which was (1) sell unneeded properties for as high a price as you can get or (2)keep them for low-cost community use. It’s a difficult choice. What was odd to the consultants who were helping us was how MANY unused properties the district has. They said they had never seen a district hold on to that much property. Additionally, the district hasn’t kept up these buildings; Viewlands had its copper wiring stripped out and now the City has a deal with the district for artists to use the building just to keep vandals away. My last point is that the person who negotiated way the Queen Anne High school property which the district lost the property AND lost money on the deal? He is still the district’s property manager.