As enrollment falls, old schools find new life as apartments

[Jilly_in_VA]

In a once-thriving neighborhood in the southeast part of Atlanta, Lakewood Elementary served families who came to work at the General Motors assembly plant, a sprawling 100-acre landmark that became a path toward economic mobility for entry-level workers. At its height in the late 1970s, the plant employed as many as 5,700 people.

But by the early ‘90s, when Gloria Hawkins-Wynn moved into the community, signs of decline were evident. The last Chevy Caprice rolled off the assembly line in 1990, and a popular antique market at the now-defunct Lakewood Fairgrounds shut down in 2006. The closure of the elementary school two years earlier further contributed to neighborhood blight, turning the abandoned structure into a hotspot for criminal activity.

“We get prostitution. We get drug dealing. We get drive-by shootings,” Hawkins-Wynn told a local news station four years ago. A neighborhood representative, she urged city leaders to turn the eyesore over to a developer.

Former students begged the city to save the school, home to some of their earliest memories: Dick and Jane books, dances in the auditorium, a principal named Mr. Hinkle. Still visible on the school’s deserted playground is a faded map of the United States.

“Please don’t demolish it,” wrote one woman. Walking to Lakewood with her mother, who died when she was 7, is a cherished memory.

Now the old school is one of several in Atlanta slated to become apartments. It’s a transformation that is increasingly taking place across the country as city leaders and developers look to give new life to vacant buildings once bustling with students and teachers, The 74 reports.

https://www.wkow.com/news/as-enrollment-falls-old-schools-find-new-life-as-apartments/article_bfe03335-0a05-5274-9165-61a0a3a14c79.html

In Knoxville, TN, the old Knoxville HS became senior apartments. They are lovely. In Georgetown, KY, the former Catholic girls' school I lived in for the first half of my first travel nursing assignment fell victim to condo developers. Not so nice.

[GreatGazoo]

1. Massachusetts has converted over a dozen

The K thru 2 classrooms are extra easy to convert if they have a bathroom attached. It's a great concept.

The headline says "enrollment" but the real dynamic is that the birthrate dropped sharply after the economic shock began in 2008. Grade schools closed first. Now it has been 18 years -- now high schools are being closed and consolidated.

[Jilly_in_VA]

2. Not just that

People are moving out of some districts. In Madison, WI, where I grew up, the schools downtown closed because families moved farther east or west. The schools that used to serve those families, both Catholic and Protestant ones, were repurposed or torn down as students moved into the areas. These schools could have been made into housing, but nobody thought far enough ahead.

As for the old Knoxville High school, it simply outgrew itself and new ones had to be built nearby, Fulton, Central, and Austin-East (a consolidation of what used to be Black schools and still mostly is). The building was, for a time, school district offices, until someone decided to buy it and turn it into senior living.