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 1. News
 2. K-12 education


SPOKANE PUBLIC SCHOOLS TO SELL OR LEASE UP TO SEVEN BUILDINGS AFTER U-DISTRICT
PURCHASE

Dec. 19, 2024 Updated Thu., Dec. 19, 2024 at 8:26 a.m.
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1 of 3



The Spokane School Board this week will consider buying this office building at
501 N. Riverpoint Blvd. in the University District, shown Monday in Spokane. The
building is owned by the Community Colleges of Spokane Foundation. (Jesse
Tinsley/THE SPOKESMAN-REVIEW)

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By Elena Perry elenap@spokesman.com(509) 459-5270


RELATED STORIES

 * Spokane Public Schools poised to buy new administration building, school
   space from Community Colleges of Spokane Foundation
 * Spokane Public Schools, Parks and Recreation to study partnership in future
   tax proposals

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.

Elena Perry's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via
the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be
republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license.
For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.


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