Spokane Public Schools to sell or lease up to seven buildings after U-District purchase

Spokane Public Schools plans to shrink its empire by as many as seven properties while purchasing space in the University District in a bid to consolidate buildings.

The Spokane School Board on Wednesday unanimously approved the purchase of a $12.2 million building from the Community Colleges of Spokane Foundation, intending to move district administration and the Community School into the space in the next four to six years.

After this move, district administration likely will recommend that the board sell or lease the properties housing central administration and the Community School; the former a downtown office building from 1980 located at 200 N. Bernard St., the latter a 64-year-old elementary school at 1025 W. Spofford Ave.

The building reshuffling is part of an effort that Superintendent Adam Swinyard said will lead to reduced costs and a net profit for the school district years down the line.

“This property acquisition is focused on property consolidation and reducing operational costs,” Swinyard said in an interview Tuesday.

In addition to the sale or lease of the downtown building, an adjacent parking lot the district owns and the Community School’s building, Swinyard is anticipating selling or leasing four other district-owned properties.

He declined to say which other properties could be sold or leased, but said one houses offices for operational staff and the rest are currently empty.

“Not all of them are schools; some of them are just buildings or office space or storage,” Swinyard said.

He declined to say how much the district expects to earn through these transactions over the next four to six years, but called it a “good business deal.”

Through the $12.2 million purchase of the U-District office, Swinyard forecast raking in a total $5 million from renters occupying the space over the next five years. After central administration leaves its downtown office and assumes the new space, Swinyard estimated operations costs in the U-District building would be around $300,000 cheaper than at their current space downtown.

The downtown parcel is valued at around $9.8 million, and the Community School building is valued around $2.5 million, according to the county assessor’s interactive map.

“Not only does this provide us some really great programmatic opportunities, but also becomes an extremely advantageous fiscal decision for the district, because we’ll be recapturing all of the cost of the facility and then some,” Swinyard told the board on Wednesday.

In consolidating the school and central office into one building, Swinyard expects further savings.

“Paying taxes, paying utilities on two properties versus co-locating in one facility – now you’re paying one HVAC bill, you’re paying one water bill, you’re paying one sewer bill, you’ve got one parking infrastructure to deal with,” Swinyard said Tuesday.

Staff at the Community School, an option high school where kids work on real projects rather than traditional classroom learning, have long been advocating for an updated space.

“This really seems to hit the nail on the head in terms of the needs that we’ve been looking for for quite a while, especially for the Community School to locate themselves in an area that allows them to fulfill their vision of more collaboration with local opportunities and businesses and educational opportunities,” Board Vice President Mike Wiser said. “Seems like a win-win-win.”

Building consolidation is one piece in a larger puzzle to find “creative ways to be cost efficient” as costs rise from inflation.

“This is really about people’s local school districts dealing with the same things that they’re dealing with at the grocery store,” Swinyard said.

Other puzzle pieces to align in the near future are a potential partnership with the city Parks and Recreation Department to share green space and school space, gearing up for potential future property tax proposals.

“You’re going to see how there’s some other puzzle pieces to this that create an even greater value to the community,” Swinyard said.