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A32 FEATURE
Thursday 3 OcTOber 2019
Vacant office parks find new life as schools, colleges

By MICHAEL MELIA natural light, school district
FAIRFIELD, Conn. (AP) — On spokeswoman Helen Lloyd
the new satellite campus of said the building lent itself
Sacred Heart University, the well to a school setting,
helicopter landing pad re- and the retrofit took much
mains as one of the few re- less time than it would have
minders that the wooded, to build a new school.
69-acre property served "We went to the planning
until recently as the global council in September, and
headquarters for General 11 months later the building
Electric. opened, all glossy and gor-
Where Jack Welch sat at geous," she said.
the pinnacle of corpo- HOUSTON
rate America, professors As the Awty International
now lead classes inside School was looking for room
the sleek, 1970s buildings to expand its early learn-
on the campus purchased ing center, the Houston
by the university following neighborhood was seeing
GE's departure for Boston in business parks give way to
2016. more condos, apartments
Across the country, of- and retail development.
fice parks that have lost When an office park across
their luster with employers the street became avail-
are being repurposed as able for sale, the private
school buildings. Colleges This undated photo made available by Josh Meister shows the North Atlanta High School in At- school in the city center
and school districts willing lanta. bought the five-acre prop-
to think beyond traditional Associated Press erty. It opened in Septem-
school settings are retrofit- ber 2017 as a campus
ting office space to help versity already has moved When Atlanta Public able land, the city of Alex- for preschool through first
them deal with growing the education, computer Schools decided to build andria saw opportunity in a grade students. A play-
enrollments and a scarcity science and engineering a high school inside a cheap, vacant office tower ground replaced a parking
of land in urban and subur- departments to what it is 11-story office tower that that had once housed the lot in an interior courtyard,
ban areas. calling its West Campus, a once housed IBM, design- National Diabetes Associa- and the ceiling was raised
Sacred Heart computer short shuttle ride from the ers found classrooms fit well tion headquarters. in one building to accom-
science professor Bob Mc- main campus. within the column structure. In September, the building modate a gym.
Cloud said he likes the Michael Kinney, a university But there was plenty that reopened as the Ferdinand The 30-year-old develop-
natural light the floor-to- administrator, said the $31.5 needed changing. T. Day Elementary School, ment had been home to
ceiling windows bring into million paid for the property A nine-story building on the named for a civil rights ad- businesses including a bi-
the classrooms. And the was a bargain when com- 56-acre property was torn vocate who worked for de- cycle maker and a tax of-
leftover cubicles outside his pared with the cost of new down to make room for a segregation in Alexandria. fice before being sold. The
office leave plenty of room construction. gymnasium and audito- The school district bought a school renovated the entire
for his graduate students. A similar idea has been rium. Stairs were installed to parking garage adjacent property, adding color to
But he is still adjusting to the under consideration a few create double-level com- to the building for play- the brick facade with new
former GE site. miles down the Connecti- mon areas for each grade ground space, including resin panels, and they were
"It's a little corporate," he cut shoreline in Stamford, level and reduce logjams a basketball court on the on track for significant sav-
said. where the school district on the elevators. And lami- roof. A footbridge was built ings compared to the costs
A 28-bedroom guesthouse was looking at an unoc- nated glass was installed in to allow children to walk of new construction before
with a ballroom has been cupied building that once all the floor-to-ceiling win- from the third floor of the running into challenges
kept by the university to housed Xerox as the poten- dows to keep students from school to the building with with the remodeling.
support a new hospitality tial site of an elementary falling through if any were play areas. "I'm not sure in the end we
program. Renovations are school. to crash into them while The bottom four floors make really realized those sav-
still underway at the two Some other examples: roughhousing. up the school, with the top ings," said Don Davis, the
main buildings, but the uni- ATLANTA IBM's kitchen and cafeteria two reserved for school of- school's director of facili-
were kept in place — with fice space. With large win- ties, "but it turned out to be
some modifications. dows that let in abundant a very nice project."q
"You can't have chande-
liers in a kids' cafeteria,"
said Bob Just, an architect
with the firm Cooper Carry
in Atlanta.
North Atlanta High School
opened in the new space in
2013. IBM once employed
over 5,000 people at the
site but that had number
had dwindled to less than
a thousand as more were
working at home or cus-
This August 2018 photo provided by The Awty International tomer sites.
School shows a playground at The Early Learning campus at The ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
Awty International School in Houston. With a fast-growing student
Associated Press
population, and little avail-