The PR Mallory Campus, a 100-year-old brick building in the Inglewood neighborhood of Indianapolis, has long been known for innovation. For decades, the company’s scientists and engineers have invented new consumer goods such as radios, washing machines and even Duracell batteries.
Now one of its new tenants, Purdue Polytechnic High School, wants its students to make scientific discoveries.
In 2020, Purdue, a 600-student charter school, took over two floors of a former industrial site that had been abandoned for 30 years. The campus has been revamped with the help of a historic renovation tax credit to make the space reusable.
The school is an example of an adaptive reuse project for education, transforming the space of a former large store, church, tortilla factory, office building and even a laser tag into an educational center. For the most part, these projects benefited charter agencies with an urban focus. These institutions often start by leasing spare rooms, such as shopping malls and churches, and then turn to adaptive reuse to save money when purchasing more permanent spaces.
School officials see the downturn in commercial real estate as an opportunity to seize new opportunities. Growth in medium-sized cities, especially in the Sun Belt, offers conversion potential. This is especially true for more autonomous schools that want to experiment with new spaces and layouts.
Larry Kearns, Principal at Wheeler Kearns Architects, said:
Charter schools reported significant growth early in the pandemic. According to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, enrollment for the 2020-21 school year increased 7% from the previous year to over 240,000. Since then, the number of facilities has continued to increase, but the number of enrollees has decreased slightly. Since 2000 Public schools lost about 1.2 million students.
“There is still a need for schools and the market has picked up again after a bit of a stall. ANF Architects, which focuses on educational projects. These include Crosstown His Concourse Charter High School, a former Sears warehouse in Memphis converted into a vertical village. “In the area of her charter school, and in low-income inner-city areas, it is not possible to find vacant land and build a school,” she said.
Charter schools continue to divide. Opponents argue that the schools deprive public institutions of funding, serve only a fraction of the student population, and in some cases provide substandard education. Many cities have rules about where they can operate, what property they can own, and even limit the total number of schools.
Proponents counter that it offers school options and newer, better facilities, especially in underfunded areas. Additionally, charter schools give you more flexibility in choosing your location.
For public schools, investments in existing real estate, school closures, Outdated infrastructure and reduced fundingsize and outdoor space requirements, and maintenance and material planning to discourage unusual locations.
Finally, many school districts focus on renovating and upgrading their own buildings. That’s partly because millions of dollars have flowed into public schools through the 2021 American Rescue Plan to improve ventilation, mechanical systems, and other upgrades.
Whitaker says carving out classroom space from a commercial building is relatively easy, but installing the plumbing, heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems that meet the needs of hundreds of students can be difficult. This makes conversion easier for large retailers and other retail spaces that often already have toilets and kitchens. She also found that churches are often better schools, with function areas, kitchens and even outdoor spaces.
Charter organizations across the country are adapting former commercial sites.
Freedom Preparatory Academy, a Memphis-based charter organization, plans to expand to Birmingham, Alabama next year. Roblin J. Webb, the organization’s chief executive, said she toured the old commercial space and former Boys’ & Girls’ Club that she hoped to purchase.
Colorado Early Colleges, a chain in the Fort Collins and Colorado Springs area, has all eight schools and one under construction in a former commercial building that includes a solar inverter factory and second-class office space. One warehouse remodeling project included an indoor gymnasium, and the rest of the cranes turned into design centerpieces. Connected by lighting fixtures, they help create unique shared spaces.
“Rather than having large public schools with 2,000 to 3,000 students, CEC can have a range of smaller schools within the region.
Such transformations, as well as renovations focused on STEM curricula and more open collaboration spaces, have become staples of instructional design. Chicago architecture firm JGMA transformed his suburban Kmart store, which opened in 2018, into Prep Academy. In New York, the brightly colored School for the Physical City opened in 1993 in a converted office space.
Charter proponents also say schools with open floor plans that mimic the office spaces of tech and design firms can prepare students for STEM-focused careers.
The XQ Institute, a nonprofit seeking more realistic educational opportunities, works with charters and public school districts in New York and Washington to promote these layouts. If 20th century schools were designed around assembly lines, shouldn’t today’s high schools look like innovation centers?
Schools like Purdue Polytechnic represent a small group that models how educational facilities are built, said Michele Cahill, a senior adviser to XQ who served as a New York school official during the Bloomberg administration. increase. The future of schools needs to free up buildings for project-based learning, avoid distractions, and create engaging spaces that enable better engagement, she said.
Purdue Polytechnic has partnered with the nearby Big 10 University of the same name to offer advanced courses. Open spaces in the building are now separated by roll-up garage doors, allowing students to create and collaborate, said Keana Warren, chief executive of the organization.
“A child-dropping facility shows what you value,” she said. “With quite a few kids coming directly from the neighborhood, it feels good to know what the facility once looked like and now feels like a real investment in them.”
In Kansas City, Barstow Schools opened a new facility, IDEA Space, in a 65,000-square-foot former Hy-Vee grocery store last fall. The new facility, which costs about $12 million, including his $3 million in real estate, is one-third his cost for a project built from scratch.
“One of the attractions of this space is that you can dream big,” says Shane Foster, president of the organization. “He’s a big old grocery store with 19-foot ceilings, so there was no need to tear down a brick wall to create this large space.”
Rising demand for early childhood education is also driving more real estate deals to convert commercial spaces into facilities for preschoolers.
According to Paul Wexler, a broker for Corcoran’s New York real estate team, office owners in Brooklyn and Manhattan have gone out of their way to attract schools by offering separate entrances and designated elevators. He recently contracted with the New York City Department of School Buildings on behalf of the Empire State Realty Trust to create a pre-kindergarten space in his showroom in Manhattan, former Ethan Allen.
Part of the demand for early childhood space comes from forced expansion due to new funding initiatives in cities such as New York, Boston and Washington. But demand is still far outstripping supply, in part, said Travis Waldrop, vice president of real estate for Primrose Schools, an early education chain of nearly 500 nationwide.
In Grant Park, south of Atlanta, an old warehouse was turned into a nursery school, and part of the roof was ripped off to create an outdoor playground within the walls of the building. In Austin, we had a playground between the parking deck and the office. Primrose also has eight other potential adaptive reuse locations in the pipeline.
“Flexibility is the strategy that wins the day,” Waldrop said. “Developing these sites is a 100-sided puzzle.”
