The PR Mallory Campus, a century-old brick building in the Englewood neighborhood of Indianapolis, has long been known for innovation. The company’s scientists and engineers have been inventing new consumer goods for decades, including radios, washing machines, and even the Duracell battery.
Now one of its new tenants, Purdue Polytechnic High School, hopes its students will make their own scientific discoveries.
In 2020, Purdue, a 600-student charter school, took over two floors of the former industrial estate, which had been abandoned for 30 years. The campus was transformed using historic renovation tax credits to help adapt the space for reuse.
The school is an example of adaptive reuse projects for education, which have turned former big-box stores, churches, tortilla factories, office buildings and even a laser tag area into educational centers. In most cases, these projects have benefited from charter institutions targeting urban neighborhoods, which often start by renting spare rooms in locations such as malls or churches, then turn to adaptive reuse to save money when buying more permanent space .
School officials see the commercial real estate slump as a time to seize new opportunities. Growth in medium-sized cities, especially in the Sun Belt, offers conversion potential. This is especially true for schools with more autonomy that want to try out new spaces and layouts.
“I see a lot more transformative work being done by social entrepreneurs who are not bound by major district rules and regulations,” said Larry Kearns, a director at Wheeler Kearns Architects.
Charter schools reported significant growth during the early years of the pandemic. According to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, enrollment increased 7 percent, or more than 240,000 students, in the 2020-2021 school year over the previous school year. The number of registrations has since fallen slightly, but the number of facilities continues to increase. Since 2000, public schools have lost about 1.2 million students.
“There is still a need for schools and the market has picked up after a bit of stagnation,” said Amanda Whitaker of ANF Architects, which focuses on education projects including a charter high school at Crosstown Concourse, a former Sears warehouse in Memphis. which was converted into a vertical village. “In the realm of charter schools and lower-income inner-city areas, the opportunity to find a vacant lot to build a school is just not there,” she said.
Charter schools have remained divisive. Opponents say the schools rob public institutions of funding, serve only a portion of the student population, and in some cases provide substandard education. Many cities have rules about where they are allowed to operate and what properties they are allowed to own, and even limits on the total number of schools.
Proponents counter that they offer school choice and newer, better amenities, especially in underfunded neighborhoods. In addition, charter schools have more freedom to choose their locations.
For public schools, there are many issues that make adaptive reuse less than ideal: existing real estate investments, school closures, old infrastructure and budget cuts, size and outdoor space requirements, and maintenance and equipment plans that discourage unusual locations. And public schools, especially high schools, are larger and have more difficulty addressing issues such as security, disruptive noise, and windows and daylight for classrooms.
Finally, many school districts are focused on renovating and upgrading their own buildings, thanks in part to millions of dollars in funding for better ventilation, mechanical systems and other upgrades that have flowed to public schools through the 2021 American Rescue Plan.
Carving out classrooms from commercial buildings is relatively easy, Ms. Whitaker said, but installing plumbing, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems that will meet the needs of hundreds of students becomes tricky. That’s why large box stores and other retail spaces, which often already have toilets and kitchens, make for easier renovations. She also found that churches—which often have multipurpose rooms, kitchens, and even outdoor spaces—are good schools.
Charter organizations across the country are adapting former commercial locations.
Freedom Preparatory Academy, a Memphis-based charter organization, plans to expand to Birmingham, Ala, next year. The organization’s CEO, Roblin J. Webb, said she visited older commercial spaces and a former Boys & Girls Club that she hoped to buy.
Colorado Early Colleges, a chain in the Fort Collins and Colorado Springs area, has all of its eight schools, and one under construction, in former commercial buildings, including a solar inverter plant and second-class office space. A warehouse conversion project includes an indoor gymnasium and a leftover crane has been turned into a design centerpiece. Strung with lighting fixtures, it helps create a unique communal space.
“Instead of one large public school with 2,000 to 3,000 students, CEC can have a series of smaller schools in the region,” says Paul Vanderheiden, interior designer at Neenan Archistruction, who has worked at all of the organization’s locations.
These kinds of conversions, and even renovations targeting STEM curricula and more open collaborative spaces, have become a staple of educational design. JGMA, a Chicago architecture firm, converted a suburban Kmart store into a prep academy that opened in 2018. In New York, the brightly colored School for the Physical City opened in 1993 in a converted office space.
Charter proponents also say that schools with open floor plans that mimic the office spaces of technology and design companies will prepare students for STEM-focused careers.
The XQ Institute, a nonprofit calling for more real-world educational opportunities and working with charters and public school districts in New York and Washington, promotes these layouts. If the schools of the 20th century were designed around the assembly line, shouldn’t today’s high schools look more like centers of innovation?
Schools like Purdue Polytechnic represent a small group that models how educational facilities should be built, said Michele Cahill, a senior advisor to XQ who was a New York school official during the Bloomberg administration. The future of schools requires opening buildings to project-based learning, she said, and creating engaged spaces that avoid distractions and enable better engagement.
Purdue Polytechnic partners with the nearby Big 10 university of the same name to provide advanced courses. The building’s open spaces, now separated by roll-up garage doors, allow students to create and collaborate, says Keeanna Warren, the organization’s CEO.
“The facility where you put your kids shows what matters to you,” she said. “A lot of our kids come straight from the neighborhood, so they feel good knowing what the facility once looked like, which now feels like a real investment in them.”
In Kansas City, the Barstow Schools opened a new facility, the IDEA Space, in a 65,000-square-foot former Hy-Vee supermarket last fall. At about $12 million, including $3 million for the real estate, the new facility cost a third of what a project built from the ground up would cost.
“Part of the appeal of the space is that you can dream big,” said the organization’s president, Shane Foster. “It’s a big old grocery store with a 20-foot ceiling, so we didn’t have to tear down brick walls to create this wide-open space.”
The increased demand for early childhood education has also led to increased real estate transactions, seeking to convert commercial space into preschool facilities.
More office owners in Brooklyn and Manhattan are getting creative to attract schools by offering separate entrances and designated elevators, said Paul Wexler, a real estate agent for Corcoran’s real estate team in New York. He recently represented Empire State Realty Trust in a deal with the New York City School Construction Authority to create a pre-K space in a former Ethan Allen showroom in Manhattan.
Part of the demand for early childhood spaces stems from mandatory expansion of new funding initiatives in cities like New York, Boston and Washington. But it’s also because demand still far exceeds supply, says Travis Waldrop, vice president of real estate at Primrose Schools, a preschool chain with nearly 500 locations nationwide.
In Grant Park, south of Atlanta, an aging warehouse was converted into a kindergarten, with the roof partially peeled off to create outdoor play space within the building’s walls. At one location in Austin, a playground was sandwiched between a parking deck and an office. Primrose has eight other potential adaptive reuse sites in the pipeline.
“Flexibility is the strategy that wins the day,” said Mr. Waldrop. “Developing these sites is a 100-sided puzzle.”
