APRIL 2008: EDUCATION
Reading, writing and real estate
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One view of Portland’s Lincoln High School can be found
in a recent seven-page assessment of its 1950s-era
facilities.
The consultant’s report ticks off an estimated $23.5
million in needed repairs and upgrades — a fraction of
the more than $1 billion in costs districtwide — that
include replacing the athletic field bleachers (closed midway
through last fall’s football season) and the
school’s roof, along with fixing significant plumbing and
electrical problems and accessibility issues. Not to mention
the “modular classrooms” eyesore necessary to
accommodate the school’s 1,400-plus students.
Another view of the aging school is that it’s an
underutilized 11-acre parcel at the foot of the West Hills in
downtown Portland, minutes from cultural activities, parks,
light rail and streetcar lines, restaurants and other
amenities, and near some of the city’s toniest
neighborhoods. A prime spot, whose land is worth $35.3
million, for a new mixed-use development.
These two perspectives of Lincoln High sum up what many school
systems across Oregon are facing: aging, outmoded buildings in
desirable locations with changing student populations that are
forcing the districts to find new areas to expand and new ways
to rebuild.
The real estate challenges associated with building and
rebuilding (or consolidating and selling) schools are as varied
as the districts themselves.
“This is not just a big district, big city
problem,” says Ruth Scott, president of Innovation
Partnership, an organization that has helped districts around
the state manage their real estate issues.
As demand for land intensifies, with supply constrained by
state land-use laws and urban growth boundaries, school
districts find themselves even more limited in where they can
place new schools. Most districts build where everyone else is
building: in town and in the ’burbs. Traditional
standards for schools call for flat parcels of 10 acres for new
elementary sites, 20 acres for middle schools and 30 acres for
high schools — plus an additional acre per 100 students.
In growing urban areas, those large sites can be few and far
between.
So schools have become motivated to reconsider what they
already own: building a new middle school on an
“oversized” elementary school site, for example, or
replacing smaller schools with larger (and taller) ones at the
same location. The land that school districts are purchasing
today may still be flat, but more than likely the parcels are
smaller and awkward configurations, acquired and developed in
conjunction with multiple partners, such as parks and cities,
or condemned from private owners. Or it’s property that
the district has managed to stockpile through long-range
planning. However they come about it, property is at a
premium.
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A separate but equal challenge is explaining to neighbors why
the district might close older schools and sell land it already
owns. Even in the face of declining enrollments, it’s an
easier decision financially than socially and emotionally.
Schools are de facto recreation centers and parks, meeting
places and historic sites. Their zoning is often conditionally
approved for school-use only in otherwise residential areas,
and rezoning for a new development can be fraught with
community input and politics.
To top it off, the school boards and superintendents facing
these decisions to buy and sell land, to build or shutter
schools, rarely come from a real estate background —
particularly the superintendents. So schools, driven by the
challenge of managing real estate, have developed new
partnerships with cities, counties, parks and libraries,
developers and community organizations.
The 21st-century school is one that is woven into the
fabric of the community, rather than carved out of it.
“THE GOOD LAND, THE EASY LAND already has been developed
a long time ago,” says architect Steve Olson of Dull
Olson Weekes Architects, which designed Portland’s Rosa
Parks School. That attitude is reflected in the varied
approaches school districts have adopted to fuel their appetite
for land.
The mostly suburban Hillsboro School District has built and
opened four elementary schools, two middle schools and a high
school since 1997. Four more elementary schools are now under
construction. The designs are “kind of cookie
cutter,” says Loren Rogers, the district’s director
of facilities, planning and property, with stock plans for
classrooms, gymnasiums and offices that can be reconfigured to
suit the site. That’s made building the schools
relatively easy, even when finding the land was not.
Some solutions have included land-banking and planning ahead.
Witch Hazel Elementary, which opened in 2003, was built on a
20-acre site that included space for South Meadows, a middle
school now under construction and scheduled to open in fall
2009. The two schools will share some of the site’s
amenities, such as bus loading and parent drop-off areas, as
well as proximity to the Witch Hazel Village community.
A 1998 bond measure enabled Salem-Keizer to build 10 new
schools, which were at capacity upon completion, but not to buy
additional land for future growth. Thus it finds itself using
modular classrooms as a stopgap measure while the real estate
market tightens. A recently proposed housing development of
some 700 homes included land designated for a new school, to be
purchased by the district, but on a parcel not suitable for
school construction.
Luis Caraballo, director of facilities and planning for
Salem-Keizer Public Schools, says that a new bond measure
proposal for his district will include “forward
investing” strategies (such as acquiring property) that
will allow the district to better plan for a future in which
Salem-Keizer may be the state’s largest district. Its
2007-2008 enrollment of 40,106 students is second in Oregon
only to Portland’s 46,262, and growing.
Other fast-growing districts have found partnerships with land
developers to be more productive solutions to their real estate
woes. When Brooks Resources began planning its 483-acre
NorthWest Crossing development in Bend, it worked with the
Bend-La Pine School District to site a 600-student elementary
school and a high school in the development. Working in
conjunction with a developer allowed for mutually beneficial
design decisions, says company president Kirk Schueler, such as
the removal of some fencing around the school, as well as
sharing costs for sewers, water and other infrastructure
development requirements.
“The more you make schools part of the development, they
become more of an asset to the community, more attractive, and
there are more eyes on the school.” With the 2,700-home
IronHorse development in the works for nearby Prineville,
Brooks has worked with Crook County School District to make the
inclusion of a school at the site even more seamless, with
parks and retail nearby.
Encouraging this kind of thinking is the impetus behind
Innovation Partnership’s new Center for Innovative School
Facilities, which is no stranger to schools’ real estate
issues. In 2001-2002, Innovation Partnership assisted Portland
Public Schools in establishing a real estate trust comprised of
real estate development professionals that serve in an advisory
capacity. Along the way, Portland Public Schools began to
identify properties that could be better used or sold.
AN INFORMAL COALITION of parents, business leaders and
developers this past fall floated a proposal to move
Portland’s Lincoln High School. This came at the same
time as the school district’s yearlong assessment of its
properties, which will likely conclude with a bond proposal in
November 2008.
Whether the move will happen or not remains to be seen, and
debated — alternate proposals may include rebuilding
Lincoln in conjunction with higher-density development on the
same site. Communities have strong emotional investments in
schools, with Lincoln’s no exception.
But the spirit, if not the details, of the Lincoln deal is the
kind of bold thinking that the Portland process seems ready to
embrace. School leaders already have revealed plans to demolish
and rebuild 10 existing elementary and middle schools as part
of a massive renovation and modernization project that will
cost well over $1 billion in the coming years. Those will
undoubtedly incorporate public libraries, parks or affordable
housing, using schools as leverage to attract and retain
families in Portland while wringing as much value as possible
from limited financial and land resources.
And while change cannot happen without school districts, it
can originate elsewhere. On a former low-income housing site,
Portland Public Schools worked with the Housing Authority of
Portland and a host of other partners to develop a master plan
that would include new mixed-use, mixed-income development,
paid for with public and private dollars, along with a new
school. Rosa Parks School opened there in 2006 on a tiny
two-acre parcel, adjacent to a Boys & Girls Club and a
community center. Its award-winning, environmentally friendly
structure has helped set a new standard for how schools in
Oregon can be integrated into their communities.
Though the push for this project — as well as the
developments in central Oregon and other examples around the
country — may not have originated with the school
district, the results are ones that benefit schools and their
communities.
“From the educators’ point of view, schools
are much more a part of the community,” says Innovation
Partnership’s Ruth Scott. “They’ve learned
that isolation doesn’t create safety.”
Safety, sustainability, flexible uses, smaller footprints and
multiple users are all trends of the modern school. And though
Oregon districts have yet to fully embrace this model, Scott
says she’s seen many examples of new partnerships in
school development.
“We’re not going to get away from building
ball fields,” Scott says.
But in the future, how those ball fields and schools get
funded and built more than likely will be a homework assignment
shared by the whole community.
Have an opinion? E-mail feedback@oregonbusiness.com
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